V 

\ 

I  The  Principle  of  Individuation 

|  IN  THE 

Philosophy  of  Josiah  Royce 


BY 

JOSEPH  HOWARD  PHILP,  M.A.,  B.D. 


* 

i 

8  A  DISSERTATION 

I 

Presented  to  the  Faculty  of  the  Graduate 

School  of  Yale  University 

in  Candidacy  for  the  Degree  of 

Doctor  of  Philosophy. 

I  I 

i  i 

i  1916  • 


The  of  Indivlduation 

IN  THE 

Philosophy  of  Josiah  Eoyce 


BY 

JOSEPH  HOWARD  PHILP,  M.A.,  B.D. 


A  DISSERTATION 

Presented  to  the  Faculty  of  the  Graduate 

School  of  Yale  University 

in  Candidacy  for  the  Degree  of 

Doctor  of  Philosophy. 


1916 


CONTENTS 


Introduction — Chapter  1 5 

Part  I.      Historical 10 

Period  I.     Chapter  11 . — Exposition 10 

Chapter   III. — Critical 18 

Period  II.  Chapter  IV. — Exposition 26 

Chapter    V. — Critical 33 

Period  III.  Chapter  Y I. — Exposition 36 

Chapter   VII.— Critical 47 

Chapter  VIII.- — Summary  on  Indivi- 

duation    57 

Part  II.      ( V-n^tniotivr  Criticism 60 

Chapter  IX. — On  the  Absolute 60 

Chaptor  X. — On  Self-alienation  ....  78 

Conclusion 91 


ERRATA — p-page;     1-line. 
I.    Misspelled   or   wrong   words. 


p.  5. 

p.  12. 

p.  15. 

p.  16. 

p.  23. 

p.  29. 

p.  31. 

p.  34. 

p.  39. 

p.  40. 

p.  41. 

p.  45. 

p.  49. 

P.  52. 

p.  61. 

p.  66. 

p.  67. 

p.  79. 

p.  85. 

p.  94. 


34 — Philosophy. 
5 — Relativity. 

33 — Apply    (not   appear). 
.  15 — Consciousnesses. 

31 — Teleological. 

20 — Brute. 

36 — Expression. 

32 — Arguing    (not   Virgin g 

18 — Purpose. 

29 — Emphasize. 

39 — Insight. 

23 — Earlier    (not    earliest 
6 — It    (not    is) 

39 — As    (not    is). 

34 — Absolute. 

38— Created. 
6 — Forekno  wl  ed  ge . 

12 — Chaos. 
9 — Conscientiousness. 
— Santayana. 


OMIT— 

p.      6.  1.  27 — The    content. 

p.    64.  1.  23 — Even. 

p.   85.   1.  42 — Only    formally. 

ADD— 

p.   47,  at  end  of  1.   37 — Not. 

MISTAKES   IN    FIGURES— 

p.      6 — note    9,    409    (not   400) 
p.    12.   1.  17 — 17    (not   15). 

pp.    16-17 — notes   49    &    50 — out   of 
correct   order. 

p.    17.   1.  24 — 53     (not    58). 
p.   27.   1.  18 — 10    (not  40). 
p.   29.   1.  19 — at   25   insert   " 
p.   37 — note   7 — 7   is  missing. 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  INDIVIDUAT10N  IN  THE 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  JO 81  AH  ROYCE. 

INTRODUCTION. 

CHAPTER    I. 

I. 

The  aim  of  this  thesis  is  to  estimate  the  contribution  winch 
Pro!  Royce  has  made  on  the  question  of  the  principle  of 
inclividuation.  It  is  a  point  on  which  monistic  idealism  must 
say  something.  And  it  is  a  point  on  which  the  answers  of 
monism  have  been  very  unsatisfactory  to  their  opponents. 

The  realist  finds  his  problem  in  a  search  for  the  principle 
of  unity  among  the  world  of  facts.  The  idealist  finds  difficulty 
in  making  full  provision  in  the  unity  for  thj  finite  individuals. 

Possibly  no  idealist  has  written  more  comprehensively  on 
the  question  than  has  Royce.  And  no  idealist  has  sought  to 
keep  his  doctrines  grounded  in  empirical  facts  more  than  he 
has.  The  older  absolutists  re-read  our  actual  thinking  ex- 
perience, our  actual  scientific  consciousness,  and  our  actual  as- 
sociative life  in  detail,  in  terms  of  that  which  gives  them 
their  reality.  But  if  you  posit  some  process  of  transmutation, 
not  consciously  experienced  by  us  as  finite,  you  can  get  almost 
any  conclusion.  Royce  would  leave  our  experiences  in  the 
region  of  the  empirical.  Our  individual  and  social  categories 
are  to  be  valid  in  the  infinite.  Our  lives  are  to  be  included 
in  the  absolute  without  any  transmutation.1 

Royce  is  ever  affirming  that  he  goes  only  so  far  as  the  finite 
facts  will  allow.  More  room  is  thus  left  for  the  actual.  He 
would  satisfy  the  empirical  scientist.  The  Absolute,  in  which 
he  seeks  to  place  finite  beings  a'nd  facts,  is  an  absolute  which 
he  has  demonstrated  as  the  logical  implication  of  the  facts. 
He  claims  to  be  able  to  make  the  transition  logically  and  truly 
in  both  directions. 

Now  it  is  submitted  in  this  thesis  that  the  Absolute  is 
brought  to  the  facts,  not  found  there.  The  apparently  larger 
concession  to  and  reverence  for  the  empirically  given  elements 
is  mainly  nominal.  So  far  from  finding  the  Absolute  by 
way  of  logic,  he  seems  to  reach  the  Absolute  by  way  of  'con- 
trast'.2 And  this  method  is  one  which  works  in  the  realm  of 


See  the  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  433.     The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosphy, 
380.      The  World  and  thp  Individual,  Vol.  T,  p.  426  f. 


•  »6  •  .*•       •  Hoy  c.c.  and  l-ndividu&tion 

the  conceptual.3  The  finite  is  portrayed  as  30  fragmentary  that 
the  completed  whole  rises  in  imagination  on  the  othev  -i<;e. 
The  true  self  that  looms  up  through  such  contrast  is  the  finite 
self.4  When  we  learn  that  "the  true  distinction,  and  the  true 
connection,  between  the  temporal  and  the  eternal  aspects  of 
Being,  furnish,  in  truth,  the  basis  for  a  solution  of  this  whole 
problem-  "5and  are  given  no  common  ground  between  the  two 
couceptions,  we  find  ourselves  at  sea.  To  be  told  that  ilthe 
eternal  Now  is  simply  not  the  temporal  present,"6  seem.s  of 
the  essence  of  contrast,7  not  of  logic. 

The  contention  is  made  here  that  the  Absolute  is  an  imported 
conception. 

If  we  bear  in  mind  however  that  Royce  would  carry  over  un- 
transmuted  into  the  Absolute  finite  facts  and  individuals,  and  if 
we  add  to  this  the  alternative6  reading  of  the  ultimate  which  he 
allows  in  his  third  period,  (i.e.  the  ultimate  is  the  Divine 
Community),  we  have  a  result  which  may  claim  to  be  no  nu-iv 
contrast  but  a  logical  conclusion.  This  alternative  reading 
while  it  marks  a  distinct  advance  in  emphasis  on  the  social- 
seems  an  unadmitted  retreat  9f  rom  the  engulfing  Absolute.  I  n 
his  latest  period,  Royce,  in  following  out  the  ontological  mean- 
ing of  loyalty,  has  been  forced  to  ascribe  something  of  the 
eternal  and  underived  to  the  members  of  the  community.  But 
the  personal  or  individual  Absolute  must  then  be  another  in- 
dividual or  the  informing  spirit  of  the  community.  Royce 


2.  See  the  Philosophical  Review    (1902),  p.  404.     Prof.  Dewey  says  "the  fragmcn- 
tariness,   the  transitoriness  of  our  actual  experience  the  content  is  magnified:    ... 
it  affords  by  contrast  the  content  of  the  definition  of  the  Absolute." 

3.  Dewey,    (o.c.),   p.   406,    claims   that  Royce   is   working  with   the   formal.      "Rvjoe 
dives  arbitrarily   from   the  region  of  concepts   into   the  claotic   sea   of   experience, 
and  fishes  out  here  and  there  just  that  particular  experience  which  is  required  at 
that  time  to  give  body  and  tone  to  thin  and   empty  categories." 

4.  See  G.  H.  Howison,   "The  Conception  of  God."  p.   104;   or  W.  E.  Hocking,  "The 
Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,"  p.  290;   or  C.  M.  Bakewell,   "The  Inter- 
national Journal  of  Ethics,"    (vol.   12,  p.  394)    in  a  review  of  The  World  and  the 

Individual. 

5.  The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  II,  p.   347. 

6.  The  Conception  of  God,  p.  348. 

7.  See  as  example  of  mere  contrast,  The  World  and  the  Individual,  II.  p  445.  "In  God 
we  are  real  individuals,  and  really  conscious  Selves,  —  a  fact  which  neither  human 
thought   nor  human   experience,   nor  yet  any   aspect   of  our  present  form  of   con- 
sciousness  can   make   present    and    obvious    to   our   consciousness,    as    now    it    is." 
How  has  the  human  being,   Prof.   Royce,  learned  about  ir  1 

8.  I  call  it  an  alternative  reading  since  I  do  not  find  the  equivalence  of  th^  two  read- 

ings to  be  proven.  Royce  seeks  by  postulating  real  individuality  to  social  unities 
above  the  level  of  man,  to  merge  finally  such  unities  in  the  Absolute.  But  I  do  not 
know  what  is  meant  when  \ve  are  told  that  t-icse  supev-jK-rso-al  unities  hav« 
'minds'.  It  is  the  citizen  who  thinks,  'not  the  state.  It  is  the  cittsou  who  h.is  con- 
science, not  the  community. 

9.  See  the  Problem  of  Christianity,  II.  p.   29G,   220,   270,  I.  p.  400.      In  private  con- 
versation Royce  claims  still  to  be  an  Absolutist,  and  refers  to  t>i»  i'.lustrstio::  of  the 
mon  and  the  boat.      See  the  Problem   of  Cliristiftrity.   TI.   po.   -4i>,   f>  i.   24*2    f 


lioyce   and  Individuation  7 

not  adopted  the  former.     The  latter  alone  seems  open  to  him 
and  it  is  not  the  Absolute  of  the  earlier  periods. 

II. 

This  change  from  the  earlier  absolutism,  if  admitted,  frees 
Royce's  work  from  a  charge  which  is  to  the  point  against  his 
earlier  position.  It  is  submitted  that  in  such  an  Absolute  as 
is  treated  of  in  the  earlier  periods,  there  is  no  room  for  real 
individuals.  No  amount  of  portrayal  of  the  situation  from 
one  side  or  from  the  other  makes  the  One  and  the  Many  really 
articulate.  The  grasping  of  the  distinction  and  connection  of 
the  eternal  and  the  temporal  is  not  made  clear.  He  oscillates 
between  an  eternal  which  is  a  grasping  of  the  whole  time-span 
and  where  all  particular  moments  are  alike  lo  the  eternal,  and 
an  eternal  which  is  in  each  finite  constituting  it  what  it  is.  Fur- 
ther his  whole  treatment  of  the  eternal  and  future  time  is  un- 
satisfactory. 

While  (in  contrast  with  Bradley)  Royce  would  ascribo 
thought  and  will,  selfhood  and  experience,  to  the  Absolute,  It 
must  be  noted  that  the  capitalizing  of  these  terms  is  a  device 
which  deludes.  With  us,  thought  always  finds  its  objects  be- 
yond itself.  For  Thought  there  is  concrete  union  with  the 
objects.  Here  again  it  is  submitted  we  have  a  contrast  present- 
ed to  oneself  in  imagination  or  conception  not  a  logical  and 
existent  fact.  So  it  is  with  the  other  individual  and  social 
categories  which  are  taken  as  valid  beyond  the  finite. 

Ill, 

Further,  if  we  follow  lloyce,  in  his  third  period,  in  what 
I  have  called  his  alternative  for  the  Absolute,  we  will  find  his 
treatment  of  the  principle  of  individuation  to  be  partial  and 
inadequate. 

The  ultimate  is  the  Divine  Community.  Individuation 
is  then  anjiiltimate  feature  of  reality.  The  individual  is  eter- 
nal and  underived.  This  being  so  reflection  and  conscious 
purpose  and  interpretation  mark  aspects  of  the  making  explicit 
of  the  potential.  They  are  not  the  ultimate  causes  for  actuali- 
zation. Back  of  reflection  and  will  lie  less  calculable  impulses 
and  desires.  The  impulse  to  live,  to  reflect,  to  will,  are  ulti- 
mately inexplicable. 


8  lioyce  and  Individuatiwi 

Eeflection  and  will  seem  to  enter  a  field  of  want  or  difficulty 
already  there.  They  are  not  primitive.  What  is  primitive'" 
must  contain,  in  germ  at  least,  what  comes  later  but  it  is  reached 
in  actual  experimentation.  It  cannot  be  outlined  in  theory 
ahead  of  time.  The  facts  of  the  social  precede  the  postulating 
of  man  as  social. 

One  may,  in  theory,  declare  that  a  life  based  on  instincts 
and  desires  and  impulses  is  one  of  anarchy.  Yet  out  of  the 
inchoate,  primitive  form  of  life  the  rational  develops.  Even 
the  higher  forms  of  individual  life  seem  to  attain  a  'second 
nature',  where  reflection  works  like  instinct  at  the  first  stM-c, 
i.e.  there  is  a  free  and  non-reasoning  functioning  of  a  life. 

IV. 

If  we  give  up  the  futile  endeavor  to  articulate  the  many  in 
an  Absolute  and  look  at  Koyce's  view  of  the  true  life  for  the 
many,  the  contention  is  made  that  the  ethical  ideal  set  forth 
is  self  alienating.  In  the  concrete,  life  cannot  be  other  than 
personal.  The  sources  or  springs  of  conduct  are  ever  within 
rather  than  without. 

It  does  not  change  the  situation  radically  to  emphasize  that 
the  choice  of  a  cause  is  left  to  individual  initiative.  Even  in 
the  third  period  the  cause  a  man  is  to  serve  is  impersonal  as 

regards  himself.     It  is  personal  only  in  that  it  involves  other 
persons.11 

The  contention  is  put  forward  that  our  life  is  so  complex 
that  no  Universal  Will  which  all  may  follow  can  be  found.12 
That  which  Royce  has  discovered  is  the  empty  formal  principle, 
'Will  that  there  be  such  a  will'.  Life  being  thus  so  complex- 
the  individual,  if  he  would  have  a  career,  not  a  chaos,  must  be 
the  center  of  that  career.  Royce  has  used  the  method  of 
magnified  contrast,  in  reducing  the  individual13  t<»  tin*  private, 
to  the  merely  private,  to  the  absolutely  isolated.  It  become* 

10.  A.  K.  Rogers    (in  The  Philosophical  Review  1900,   p.    I  GO)    says   "Thought,    from 
the   biological    standpoint,    cannot   possibly    be   regarded    aa   an    end    i.i    itself,    but 
only  as  a  function  01  the  whole  life-process.      For  psychological  theory,   the  origi- 
nal datum  is  the  organism  already  struggling  to  maintain  and   develop   itself.      Jt 
is  from  this  that  the  life  of  conscious  experience  is  slo-vly  differentiated." 

11.  See  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  p.  20.     G.   Santayana,    (in   The  Journal  of   Phil. 
Psy.  and  Sc'ic  Method  Nov.  25,   '15,  p.   649),  asks  "Why  is  true  freedom   so   very 
unlike  the  blessed  conseiousnesss  of  being  willingly  a   sU-ve  ?" 

12.  A.  K.  Rogers   (The  Philosophical  Review  1016,  p.   162)    sr-.ys  "\ve  are  led   to  de- 
fine the  Summum  Bonum  as  the  sum  of  the  interests  and  satisfactions  of  all  sent! 
ent  creatures,  not  in  so  far  as  they  possess  some  one  identical  content,    but   in  so 
far  as  they  are  capable  of  living  together  harmoniously  in  ihe  same  world." 

13.  See  Tho  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  p.  98. 


Eoyce   and  Indiciduation  9 

an  empty  claim  to  individuality.  On  the  other  side  is  the 
world  of  objective  situations  and  affairs.  Of  course  one  will 
choose  this  alternative  as  giving  content  to  life.  But  it  is 
submitted  that  this  life  of  content  will  be  chaotic  without  the 
center  of  selfhood  around  which  it  must  be  organized.  Such- 
contrast  is  not  logic  and  outside  the  merely  formal,  in  the 
world  of  objective  situations  we  find  that  life  centers  around 
selves. 


only  is  the  world  too  large  and  complex  for  one  to  find 
an  unequivocal  Universal  Will,  but,  the  world  being  composed 
of  many  individuals,  the  question  of  unanimity  on  the  exact 
meaning  of  the  Universal  Will  becomes  a  vexing  problem.  'So 
many  Gods,  so  many  creeds'  says  a  poet.  How  is  one  to  know 
or  choose  among  the  rival  claimants  for  one's  loyalty  ?  Royce 
seems  very  obscure  at  this  point. 

If  I  find  myself  at  odds  with  a  neighbor  in  our  interpretation 
of  this  Will,  1  shall  be  less  an  individual  if  I  drop  my  own 
view  to  follow  his.  And  if  I  seek  to  follow  the  gleam  for 
myself,  I  will  have  great  difficulty  in  making  my  neighbor 
accept  my  position  as  impersonal  and  unbiased. 

In  fact,  it  is  submitted  that  it  is  only  in  conception  that  one 
can  build  up  a  world  in  which  the  self  and  its  satisfactions 
are  sunk  in  larger  causes.  On  the  contrary,  in  actual  life  the 
source  of  all  initiative  is  personal,  and  at  every  stage  the  self 
is  still  the  center  of  its  own  life  and  still  estimates,  in  terms 
of  its  own  satisfactions,  the  value  of  objective  situations  and 
events  and  cantos. 


't    10  Royce  and  Individuation 

PART  I.— HISTORICAL. 

:i 

>  Period  L~ 

CHAPTER  II. 

* 

Exposition. 

i. 

\ 

For  the  purpose  of  this  thesis,  the  writings  of  Prof.  Royce 
are  divided  into  three  periods.1  In  the  first  period,  the  prin- 
ciple of  individuation  in  the  finite  is  'Reflection'.  In  the 
second,  it  js  'will'.  In  the  third,  it  is  /loyalty'  or  the  'will  to 
interpret'. 

In  the  first  period,  Royce  is  seeking  primarily  to  demon- 
strate the  reality  of  the  'Absolute'. '  In  the  second,  he  seeks 
to  make  clear  the  principle  of  individuation  and  also  to  artiou 
late  fully  the  One  and  the  Many,  the  'World  and  the  Indivi- 
dual'. In  the  third  period,  we  are  given  the  social  or  ethical 
implications  of  the  n^taphysical  position  which  Royce  occupies. 

In  the  first  period  he  is  reacting  against  a  metaphysics 
^  based  on  evolution.2  The  long  processes  in  evolutionary  des- 
cent seem  to  Royce  to  be  an  historical  succession  only  if  behind 
or  in  all  the  change  there  is  the  permanent..  In  the  second 
period,  he  shows  that  adequate  place  is  given  to  the  finite 
individual  in  the  Absolute  whose  existence  he  has  demonstrat- 
ed. In  the  third  period,  the  ethical  and  social  implications 
in  the  finite  are  elaborated  to  show  the  significant  place  in 
reality  which  the  finite  occupies. 

II.       ^ 

At  the  time  the  first  book  was  written  scientists  were  ask- 
ing, What  are  the  facts  ?  Some  of  philosophic  bent  were  con- 
structing a  metaphysics  on  the  basis  of  these  evolution: ne- 
sciences. Their  ultimate  was  'Nature',  'Xatural  Law',  'Hu- 
manity' or  an  'Unknowable'.3 

1.  (a)  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Phil.  (1885).  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy 
(1892).  The  Conception  of  God  (pp.  3-50)  (1895).  (b)  The  Conception  of  God 
(Supplementary  Essay)  1897.  The  World  and  the  Individual,  2  vols.  1899,  1901. 
(c)  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty  (1909).  The  Sources  of  Religious  Insight  (1911). 
The  Problem  of  Christianity,  2  vols.  (1913).  There  are  also  two  books  of  essaya 
and  some  reprints  of  articles  in  periodicals.  (1)  Studies  in  Good  and  Evil.  (2) 
Wm.  James  and  Other 


lioyce   and  Indu-iduation  11 

* 

Koyce  seeks  an  answer  to  the  question,  What  is  a  fact  ? 
The  answer,  he  finds  in  following  out  the  logical  implications 
of  the  fact.  He  finds  ^  positive  doctrine  of  an  At«6lute.*.The 
world-primary  is  'Thought'.  Such  Thought  he  holds  to  be  a 
'person'.4  The  world  in  time,  of  which  evolution  has  so  much 
to  say  is  a  temporal  manifestation  of  this  personal  life.  For 
Koycc,  'the  far-off  divine  event  to  which  the  whole  creation 
moves'8  is  .eternally  existent.  "Time  is  once  for  all  present 
in  all  its  moments  to  a  universal  all-inclusive  thought."6 

*. 

The  facts,  whose  logical  implications  are  examined  by 
li'iyce,  ,are  the  najture  of  the  'ough.t',7  of  'religious  faith',7  of 
•finite  selfhood''8  of  'finite  experience'.9  The  examination  of 
TU-  "possibility  of  error"10  is  his  favorite11  demonstration  in 
proving  the  reality  of  the  Absolute.  In  his  treatmenjL^rf  the 
doctrine  of  the  Absolute,  we  have  thus -much  of  Royce's  views 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  finite  individual  and  of  the  principle 
of'  individuation. 

The  method,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  logic  of  Royce's 
doctrine,  and  one  which  he  explicitly  states,  is  this.  "The  onlj 
demonstrable  truths  of  an  ultimate  philosophy  relate  to  the 
constitution  of  an  actual  realm  of  experience,  and  to  so  much 
only  about  the  constitution  of  this  realm  as  cannot  be  denied 
without  self-contradiction."  That  truth  is  "Absolute",  which? 
if  you  deny,  "you  implicitly  affirm."12  In  the  sense  of  imper- 
fection, defeat,  error,  or  incompleteness,  we  find  logical  impli- 
cations of  a  positive  doctri'ne  of  reality  as  it  is. 

2.  See  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  ppi  6,   11,  43,   167,  221  f,  228,  237,   245, 
280,    401,   430.      3.    (See  Religious   Aspect  of  Philosophy )fi  p.    6. 

4.  See  the  use  of  the  personal    pronoun      inThe  Religious  Aspect  of  Pfuilosophy,    p. 
433  f.     In  the  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  380,  he  uses  the  word  'person'  of 
the  Absolute.      In  'The  World  and  the  Individual',  vol.  II,  p.  XIV,  writing  of  his 
earliest  book,   he   says  in  it  he  assribed   'conscious   individuality'   to   the  Absolute. 

5.  Compare    with    Tennyson — Browning    (Paracelsus). 

"All   tended   up   to   mankind, 
And  man  produced,  all  hath  its  end  thus  far, 
But   in   completed   man   begins   anew 
A  tendency  to  God." 

6.  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  423.      See  also  pp.   443,   484. 

7.  (See   The   Religious   Aspect  of   Philosophy,)    Bks.    I.    &    II. 

8.  See  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,    pp.   368-380. 

9.  See  The  Conception  of  God,  pp.  3-50. 

10.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,   Ch.  XI. 

11.  It   was   the   subject   of   his   thesis  for   the   Doctor's    degree   and   is   referred   to   in 
different  places   in  his  books.      See   The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,   p.   XIII. 
The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  371.      The  Conception  of  God,  pp.  166,  342. 
Studies  in  Good  and  Evil,  pp.   140,   163.     The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  II., 
p.   VI.   f.   Without   a  preliminary   statement   shov/ir.g  the   complete   identity   of  the 
ou.iect    of    knowledge    and    the    object    in    the    i-e;'l    v.orld,    a    proof   based    on    the 
nature  of   thought   is   open   to   ambiguity.      Conceptual   completaness   is   so    easy    to 
reach. 

12.  Th«    World   ami    tho   Individual,    vol.   I,    p.    XI. 


12  lloycc   and   I  lulirUl  nation 

III. 

If  'error',  is  possible  there  is  a  real  difference  between  truth 
and  error.  If  evolution  or  a  stream  of  successive  events  were 
the  last  word,  our  standards  of  truth  and  error  would  be  ten- 
tative— if,  indeed,  we  would  have  any  sense  of  continuity. 
The  doctrine  of  Total  Relativilty  goes  beyond  'reasonable 
doubt'.  "It  tries  to  put  scepticism  to  rest,  by  declaring  the 
opinion,  'that  there  is  error7,  to  be  itself  an  error."13  But  "if 
^  there  is  no  real  distinction  between  truth  and  error  then  the 
statement  that  there  is  such  a  difference  is  not  really  false,  but 
only  seemingly  false."14  This  is  the  ultimate  test.  "That 
real  error  exists  is  absolutely  indubitable."1  Hence  the  finite 
bei'ng  is  capable  of  valid  thought.10 

Where  then  is  the  criterion  of  truth  and  error  ?  It  is 
not  the  subjective  standard  of  so-called  psychological  idealism, 
for  "if  my  mind  can  be  concerned  only  with  its  own  ideas, 
then  sincerity  and  truth  are  identical,  and  truth  and  error  will 
be  alike  impossible."15  In  such  a  case,  I  could  make  correct 
assertions  about  the  content  of  my  thought.  But  we  mean  by 
truth  more  than  mere  correctness. 

There  is  more  adequacy  in  the  "commonplace  assumption- 
that  a  statement  of  mine  can  agree  or  fail  to  agree  with  it? 
real  object,  when  this  object  is  wholly  outside  my  thought."1 
The"  finite  thinker  is  one  "whose  thought  has  objects  outside 
of  it  with  which  it  can  agree  or  disagree."1      If  this  is  true 
of  each,  it  is  true  of  all  finite  beings  and  the  reality  of  truth 
and  error  cannot  be  explained  on  "the  consensus  of  men"  or 
by  a  show  of  hands. 

Again,  this  question  of  the  reality  of  truth  and  error  is  not 


13.   The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  394.      14.  Ibid,  p.  375.      15.  Ibid,  p.   395. 

16.  This  is  not  merely  to  say  that,  however  critical  one  may  be  of  thought's  activity, 
one  must  start  with  this  necessary  assumption  that  thought  is  capable  of  reaching 
valid   results.      No    doubt    it   is   the    "reflexive   turn',,    the    "absolute   assurance"   of 
the  subject — as  indicated  in  "The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience",  p.   191 
•f.  by  W.  E.  Hocking.     Royce  in  turning  in  on  the  subject  wishes  to  see  what  the 
'subject*  is.     He  finds  the  subject  is  in  reality  the  Absolute  as  Subject. 

17.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,   p.    378.     D.    S.    Miller  in   the  Philosophical 
Review    (1893)    p.   403  f.  has  sought  to  show  the  vicarious  nature  of  knowledge 
which  carries  past  experiences   in  image,   kinesthesis  or  other  symbolic  equivalent. 
He  thinks  that  this  meets  Royce  on  the  nature  of  error,  in  that  the  finite  knower 
himself  carries   the  corrective   of   the   error   in   this  vicarious   form.     An   inclusive 
mind  would  not  then  be  needed.     James  (in  "The  Meaning  of  Truth"  p.  22,  note) 
agrees   with    Miller.      The   problem   of   Royce    is   however   just   that   which    Miller 
assumes,   viz. :    the  significance  of  our  knowing  actual  reality     Miller's  work  is  a 
study  in  the  psychology  of  an  individual.     Royce  is  dealing  with  the  metaphysical 
question. 

18.  'The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy',    p.   378.    19.   Ibid.   p.   377. 


Royce  and  Individuation  13 

one  which  time  fixes.  We  say  that  time  will  prove  one  right 
or  wrong.  But  if  it  will  be  right  in  the  future  it  must  be 
right  in  the  present.  "The  future  is  now,  as  future,  non- 
existent, and  so  judgments  about  the  future  lack  real  objects."20 
Truth  does  not  depend,  for  its  infallibility,  on  the  outcome  of 
the  temporal  process.  My  judgment  is  about  real  objects  and 
is  true  or  'false  now.  I  do  not  "make"  but  "find"  21  truth. 
One  can  speak  neither  truly  nor  falsely  about  a  merely  "pos- 
sible"" object. 

The  agreement  or  disagreement  of  my  thought  with  objects 
outside  of  it  "can  be  possible,  only  if  there  is  a  thought  that 
includes  both  my  thought  and  the  object  wherewith  my  thought 
is  to  agree.  This  inclusive  thought  must  be  related  to  my 
thought  and  its  objects  as  my  thought  is  related  to  the  various 
partial  thoughts  that  it  includes  and  reduces  to  unity  in  any 


one  "of  my  complex  assertions."2  My  judgment  is  true  ory 
false  according  a>-it  agrees  with  or  differs  fromthis  all-embrac-^ 
ing  thought.  ^And  'Time',  in  which  I  become  aware  of  the 
accuracy  of  my  thought,  is  "present  in  all  its  moments  to  a 
universal  and  all-inclusive  thought^Vin  the  unity  of  one 
eternal  moment"25  Further  a  judgment,  to  "be  false  when 
made,  must  be  false  before  it  was  made.  An  error  is  possible 
only  when  the  judgment  in  which  the  error  is  to  be  expressed 
always  was  false"2  This  all-inclusive  thought  has  present 
to  itself  "all  possible  relations  of  all  the  objects  in  space,  in 
time,  or  in  the  world  of  the  barely  possible."27  It  is  thus  an 


"absolute  rational  unity/x^*  "Our  thought  needs  the  Infinite 
Thought  in  order  that  JT  may  get,  through  this  Infinite  judge, 
the  privilege  of  being  so  much  as  even  an  error"28  and  "save 
for  Thought  there  is  no  truth,  no  error,  in  separate  thoughts."2 
The  finite  being  is  "a  part  of  the  universal  life."3 

In  the  finite  individual,  thought  and  its  objects  are  never 
fully  united.  Evolution  holds  out  to  thought  the  hope  that 
the  future  will  bring  fulfilment.  Royce  sees  the  'meaning' 
of  thought  as  indicating  that  such  fulfilment  is  eternally  pre- 
sent in  the  Absolute.  The  Thought  of  the  Absolute  is  ever 


20.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  422  f.  21.  Ibid.  p.  431.  22.  Ibid,  p.- 
428  f.  23,  Ibid.  p.  377  f.  Here  we  see  reference  to  finite  thought  as  a  true 
unity  in  variety  or  variety  in  unity.  This  has  reference  not  to  thought  in  relation 
to  its  objects,  but  in  itself  as  it  faces  its  world  of  objects.  In  The  World  and 
the  Individual,  vol.  I,  p.  490  f.  Royce  lays  emphasis  on  this  as  something  present 
in  the  finite  corresponding  to  the  unity  of  the  Absolute. 

24.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  423.  25.  Ibid.  p.  441.  26.  Ibid,  p  424 
f.  27.  Ibid.  p.  425.  28.  Ibid.  p.  427.  29.  Ibid.  p.  432.  30.  Ibid.  p.  381. 


14:  Royce   and  Individ  nation 

one  with  its  object.  The  persistent  incompleteness  in  the  tem- 
poral, indicates  that  the  true  self  of  the  fragmentary  finite  self 
is  the  Absolute.  We  are  parts  of  the  Infinite  Subject. 

Again  this  Thought  is  inclusive  of  "Will  and  Experience,"3 
and  refers  "not  only  to  finite  processes  of  thinking,  but  also 
and  expressly  to  the  inclusive  Whole  of  Insight ;  in  which  boti 
truth  and  value  are  attained,  not  as  objects  beyond  Thought's 
'ideas  but  as  appreciated  and  immanent  fulfilment  or  expression 
of  all  the  purposes  of  finite  thought."32 

The  logic  of  the  facts  of  'error'  has  thus  led  up  to  the  cuu 
ception  of  an  'All-Thinker'.  This  whole  has  constituted  a 
world  in  which  we  find  what  we  term  finite  individuals.33  In 
these  finite  beings  is  a  power  of  thinking  or  'Reflection',  which 
is  able  to  transcend  the  temporal.  The  objects  of  this  reflec- 
tion are  ever  'beyond  it',  a  separation  which  ir  never  overcome 
in  the  temporal.  "Moments  of  Insight"34  come  when,  in  ideal, 
the  separation  is  overcome.  This  is  net  a  mystic  vision  since 
it  is  a  product  of  reflection. 

IV. 

The  finite  being  is  as  'thinker'  a  true  'part'  of  the  Absolute 
as  Thinker,  and  is  capable  of  valid  thought.  This  is  true  of 
the  finite  as  a  reflective  being  facing  its  world  of  objects.  If 
true  individuality  means  the  complete  union  of  thought  with 
its  objects,  then  finite  beings  are  complete  only  in  the  Abso- 
lute. The  temporal  is  'Appearance'  not  reality.35  The  true 
self  of  each  finite  being  is  the  Absolute. 

This  Absolute  as  Subject  has  individuated  himself  ("cut 
itself  up"36) into  the  world  of  individuals,  or  "separate  empiri- 
cal .selves".  With  the  passing  of  the  empirical,  reunion  of  the 

31.    'The  Reiigidus  Aspect  of  Philosophy'  pp.   433,   435. 

32.'  Quoted  from  The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  I,  pp.   IX  f.  where  Royce  is  re- 
ferring to  this  usage,   in  the  earlier  work,   of  the  term  Thought. 

33.  It  must  be   emphasized   that  Royce  is   not   showing    that   the   finite   is   merely   the 
object  of   the  Absolute  Knowledge    (As  James  interprets  him — see   "A   Pluralistic 
Universe"  p.   36).      The  finite  individual  is   a  constituent  element  of  the  Absolute 
Energy.      (See    Bosanquet — "The    Principle    of    Individuality    and    Value"    p.    372 
note).      As   a   constituent   element  of   the   Absolute  mind,    not   as   an   object  of   the 
Absolute  thought,    thought   in   the  finite  is  a  true  "unity  in   variety"   or  variety   in 
unity,   and  is  a  true  fragment  or  part  of  the   Absolute  as   Subject. 

34.  The   Religious   Aspect   of   Philosophy,    p.    156. 

35.  F.  H.  Bradley  in  "Truth  and  Reality"  p.  250  writes:  "We  have  appearance  wheu 
ever,    and    so   far   as,    the   content    of   anything   falls    outside    of    its    existence,    its 
'what'  goes  beyond  its  'that'.     You  have  reality  on  the  other  hand  so  far  as  these 
two  aspects  are  inseparable,   and  where  one  may,  perhaps,   be  said  to  reconstitute 
tho  other." 

Hf>.    See   this    expression — The    Religious    Aspect   of   Philosophy,    p.    194. 


and  hidividuation  15 

parts  takes  place  for  "we  know  nothing  of  individual  immor- 
tality."37 The  part,  as  a  separated  individual,  has  a  temporal 
appearance  only. 

In  the  'part',  the  individuating  principle  of  the  Absolute 
is  present  as  'reflection'  or  as  'finite  thought'.  At  work  in  the 
finite,  to  bring  it  to  simplicity  and  unity,  is  found  this  power 
of  thought.  "Moments  of  insight"  give  needed  direction.  The 
finite  individual  glimpses  his  true  self  and  henceforth  his  aim 
is  to  live  the  part.  In  the  temporal,  he  seeks  to  realize  the 
will  of  the  Absolute. 


Finite  'thought',  then,  is  that  which  marks  the  finite  indi- 
vidual as  man.  Its  active  endeavor  is  to  grasp,  in  unity  and 
simplicity,  the  world  of  objects  beyond  it.  It  is  the  intellec- 
tualistic  or  reflective  power  in  the  finite  individual  which  is 
meant.  Koyce  in  his  theory  of  the  Absolute  would  trace  thio 
individuating  thought  back  to  its  eternal  spring.  Whether  or 
not  one  agrees  with  this  Absolutism,  the  doctrine  remains  that 
reflection  or  thinking  in  man  individuates  the  finite.  It  is 
that  which  constitutes  him  a  human  being. 


V. 


I  have  given,  somewhat  fully,  the  use  Royce  makes  of  "the 
possibility  of  error."  In  a  similar  manner,  other  finite  facts 
are  made  to  yield  up  their  ontological  significance.  In  "The 
Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy"  (Book  I.),  the  meaning  of 
'oughtness'  is  traced  out.  It  implies  a  world-will,  inclusive  of 
all  wills  and  purposes  as  its  'parts'.38  Finite  wills  are  constituent 
elements  of  this  central  purpose,  not  mere  objects  of  that  pur- 
pose. This  answer  to  the  moral  demand  construes  the  world 
in  terms  which  meet  the  demands  of  religious  faith.  The 
world  is  a  "World  of  Divine  Life".39  This  insight  has  come 
from  within  the  finite  consciousness,  not  from  without.40 


37.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.   478.      See  also  p.   440.     In  "The  World 
and  the  Individual",  vol.  II,  p.  XIII,  our  author  writes  that  at  the  time  he  wrote 
the  earlier  book,   he  was  not  clear  as  to  how  his  doctrine  would  appear  in  the 
question  of  the  immortality  of  the  individual.     In  "The  Conception  of  God"  pp. 
75,140,   322-326,  we  see  evidence  of  a  change  from  the  doctrine  as  stated  in  The 
Religious    Aspect    of   Philosophy.     For    St.    Thomas    (Q,    LXXVI,    Art.    11.)    the 
immaterial   souls   of  men  are   first  individuated  by   the  bodies   they  assume.     The 
inclinatio  to  an  individual  body  still  individuates  it  on  the  passing  of  the  empirical 
See  the   Conception  of  God,   p.   227. 

38.  See  the  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,   pp.    141,   217,    380  f.    437,    457. 
P.O.   Ibul   p.    4?>fi.      40.      Ibid.    p.    470. 


lloycc   and  I  ndlcnl  nation 


The  finite  'self,  with  a  world  of  other  minds  and  objects 
of  its  thought  beyond  the  self,  is  seen  to  be,  in  reality,  one 
with  them.  "You,  in  one  sense,  never  do  or  can  get  beyond 
your  own  ideas,  nor  ought  you  to  wish  to  do  so,  because  in 
truth  all  those  other  minds,  that  constitute  your  outer  and  real 
world,  are  in  essence  one  with  your  own  self."41  "Your  total 
of  normal  consciousness  already  has  the  object."4  There  is 
thus  no  prison  of  the  inner  self.  In  thinking,  the  self  actively 
means  or  refers  to  its  object.  It  must  "in  some  measure  al- 
re.idy  possess  that  object,  enough,  namely,  to  identify  it."4 
as  what  the  self  means.  Each  finite  self,  imperfect  always  HS 
finite,  is  seen  complete  as  the  Absolute.  "There  is,  at  last, 
but  one  self,  organically,  reflectively  inclusive  of  all  selves, 
and  so  of  all  truth."44  "This  Self;**  infinitely  amlreflectively, 
transcends  our  consciousness,  and  therefore  since  it  includes 
us,  it  is,  at  the  very  least,  a  person  and  more  definitely  conscious 
than  we  are."46 

In  the  California  Lecture,  the  recognized  incompleteness  of 
human  'experience7  is  shown  as  implying  a  'completed'  ex- 
perience. In  finite  experience,  there  is  divorce  between  ideas 
and  their  objects.  In  'Experience/,  "true  ideas  are  fulfilled, 
^nfirmed,  and  verified."47  For  the  Absolute,  "All  genuinely 
significant,  all  truly  thinkable  ideas  would  be  seen  as  directly 
fulfilled,  and  fulfilled  hi  his  own  experience.''4 

The  Absolute  constitutes49  the  initial  or  rather  the  eternal 

4 uidivi dilation  of  selves,  or  wills.  These  finite  selves,  guided 
by  reflection,  seek  actively  to  conquer  or  understand  their  en 
vironing  world.  This  process  of  experience50  is  ever  temporally 

49.   See  "The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy"  p.   462.     "The  Infinite  thinks  them". 

See  also  456,   "in  thinking  thee." 

In  this  change  of  terminology  from  'thought'  to  'experience'  we  see  an  evidence  of 
41.  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy,  p.  368.  42.  Ibid.  p.  371.  43.  Ibid.  p.  370. 

44.    Ibid.    p.    379. 

45.  We   have   throughout   Royce'B   statement   of   the  nature   of   a    'self   an   oscillation 
rather  than  a   true  passage  from  one   idea  of   'self   to   another.     The  word   'self 
is  used  iu  the  first  place,  of  the  unity  of  consciousness,   as  opposed  to  the  multi- 
plicity of  its  content.      It  is  used  also   in  the  sense   of  kHie   concrete  self  of  finite 

experience.  To  say  that  subject  and  object  are  indivisible  means  simply  that  nn 
object  cannot  be  conceived  except  as  existing  within  a  unity  of  consciousness. 
Here  we  are  dealing  with  knowledge  in  the  abstract  or  so-called  representative 
sense.  But  when  references  are  made  to  the  concrete  self  and  the  object  is  said 
to  have  no  existence  outside  the  finite  subject,  we  have  the  unity  of  the  othei' 
meaning  of  self  carried  over  illegitimately.  In  the  concrete  self  there  is  no 
promise  of  that  inclusive  unity  which  implies  that  the  universe  may  be  conceived 
&s  a  concrete  experience  or  a  single  consciousness. 

46.  "The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy"  p.  380.     There  is  no  trace  here  of  any  trans- 
mutation   of    the    finite    selves    in    being    included.     Bosanquet     (The    Principle    of 
Individuality   and   Vjslue,    p.    387    f.      See   also    p.    373.)    criticizes   Royee   on   this 
point. 

47.  "The   Conception   of  God"  p.    9.      48.   Ibid.   p.    10. 


Jloycc   and   Iiidividuaiion  17 


ime-  / 
lute. 


incomplete.  The  'parts'  have  always  ;thus  a  fragmentary  time- 
expejdence.  Eternally,  each  is  complete  in  or  as  the  Absolute.. 

/  Reflection  or  thinkirig  is  that  which  individuates  the  finite 
in  the  time  order.  Insight  enables  the  finite  to  see  his  re- 
lation to  the  whole  and  thus  to  live  his  life  truly  by  seeking  to 
will  the  Universal  WilL^ 

^The  Absolute,  whether  considered  as  'Thought'  or  'Self  or 
'Experience',  is  a  direct,  immediate  and  eternal  union  of 
Thought  with  its  objects;  a  Self,  not  merely  thinking  validly, 
but  concretely ;  an  Experience  which  is  complete,  its  ideas  eter- 
nally fulfilled.  It  is  this  Absolute  which  individuates51  the 
finite  thinker,  not  as  an  object  of  his  thought,  but  as  a  con- 
stituent element  of  himself  as  Subject.  Just  why  this  individ- 
uation  takes  place  we  are  not  informed.  It  is.  ^ 

The  finite  "parf  carries  over  into  the  temporal  some  of  the 
same  power  of  individuation.  This  is  'reflection'..  This 
principle  of  individuation  operates  in  the  time-experience  to 
constitute  man  as  individual.  From  the  side  of  consciousness52 
in  the  finite  being,  Royce  would  thus  reach  logically  a  doctrine 
of  a  world-consciousness. 

Divine  Thought  then  is  the  principle  of  individuation  in 
the  universe.  Reflection  is  the  form  in  which  it  appears  a<* 
the  'parts'  of  the  Absolute.  The  Divine  Thought  in  its  larger 
implications  is  attained  in  insight  in  the  consciousness58  of  the 
part. 


that  pragmatic  tendency  current  to-day.  Royce  is  changing  from  A  more  'struc- 
tural' idea  of  reality  to  a  functional  or  dynamic  one.  Thought  is  being  subor- 
dinated to  thinking.  Reality  is  being  read  in  dynamic — not  in  static  terms.  Now 
just  as  Royce  admits  'thought'  to  be  a  dealing  with  objects  in  some  sense  beyond 
the  thinker,  so  'experience'  seems  equally  to  have  to  do  with  objects  which  are 
outside  in  some  sense.  When  I  possess  a  description  of  reality,  I  am  not  in  direct 
and  immediate  union  with  the  objects  out  there.  Finite  experience  may  be  re- 
garded as  holding  the  greater  part  of  its  possessions  in  a  representative  way. 
A  short  stretch  of  time,  the  present,  is  direct  and  immediate.  Increase  of  Know- 
ledge means  with  us  not  so  much  the  widening  of  direct  experience  as  the  in- 
crease of  that  which  is  held  in  a  representative  way.  Completeness  for  us  would 
not  mean  one  single  and  direct  experience  of  the  whole. 

51.  In  the  "Studies  in  Good  and  Evil"  pp.  198-248,  Royce  sets  forth  a  conception  of 
nature   as  an  individual   with  an   apperceptive    span   different   from   man's. 

52.  In  "Implications  of  Self-Consciousness"  in  "Studies  in  Good  and  Evil"   pp.    140- 
168,    Royce  has  further  outlined   this  argument. 

53.  See  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,   p.   470. 


18  Royce  and  Itidivtduation 

CM  I  APT  Kit  III. 
Critical. 
I. 

The  interest  in  this  period  of  our  author's  work  center.-* 
around  the  proof  of  the  reality  of  an  Absolute.  It  raised  other 
questions  which  it  leaves  unanswered.  The  individuarion, 
initiated  in  and  by  the  Absolute,  is  only  treated  incidentally. 
Where,  in  such  an  Absolute,  provision  is  made  for  the  reality 
of  the  finite,  is  a  question  that  can  also  be  raised.  Of  this 
latter  problem  only  a  little  will  be  said  here.  Fuller  notice 
will  be  taken  of  it  in  Part  II.  It  persists  throughout  Royce's 
work. 

It  seems  clearly  our  author's  view  that  reality,  as  Thought, 
is  thought  fully  and  concretely  fulfilled,  a  completed  experience, 
idea  in  perfect  union  with  its  object  in  one  eternal  instant. 
It  is  not  clear  where  in  such  a  finished  universe  there  is  a'ny 
place  for  free  individuals  even  as  mere  thinkers,  to  say  nothing 
of  real  activity  on  the  part  of  the  finite.1  A  completed  ex- 
perience would  seem  to  leave  no  room  for  even  such  novelties 
as  a  movement  of  reflective  thought  which  is  a  kind  of  experi- 
ence. It  is  submitted  that  in  a  finished  universe,  or  in  a  com- 
pleted experience,  there  is  no  reality  in  'time  experience'  or 
'free'  individuals.  It  does  not  make  it  less  impossible,  to 
postulate  'degrees  of  reality'.  If  my  thinking,  as  psychical 
fact,  and  my  activities  involving  the  environing  world,  are  all 
there  eternally,  it.  seems  impossible  to  account  for  my  sense 
of  pioneering,  of  responsibility.  Or  does  the  Whole  take  oare 
to  provide  even  this  'feeling'  of  being  free  ? 

W^e  have  noted  already  that  Eoyce  does  not  think  of  the 
finite  consciousness  as  the  object  of  the  thought  of  the  Absolute 
but  as  a  constituent  element  of  the  Absolute  as  Subject.  It 
participates  in  the  nature  of  the  Absolute.  If  this  Subject, 
individuated  into  constituent  elements,  is  eternally  fulfilled  in 

1.  Hy  Jones  in  the  "Hibbert  Journal"  vol.  I,  No.  I,  in  reviewing  Royce'a  Gilford 
Lectures  says  "He  adopts  Mr.  Bradley 's  doctrine  of  thought  and,  from  that  point 
of  view,  the  substitution  of  the  categories  whole  and  part  for  those  of  appearance 
and  reality  is  not  possible,  nov  therefore  a  positive  defence  of  both  the  finite  aul 
the  infinite.." 


lioycc    and    J ndicid nation  11) 

its  object,  then  the  'parts'  are  fulfilled  also.  There  is  to  be  no 
duplication  of  thought  or  .experience.  Time-experience  seems 
some  isolated  extra,  unaccountably  thrown  in.  If  the  'parts', 
as  such,  are  not  eternally  fulfilled,  then  their  fulfilment  in  time 
may  be  real,  but  only  at  the  expense  of  the  'finishedness'  of  the 
world.  Inasmuch  as  Prof.  Royce  would  cling,  as  a  point  of 
departure,  to  finite  fact,  it  would  .seem  contradictory  to  reach 
logically  a  position  which  would  enable  him  to  count  thejpoi:it 
of  departure  something  less  than  real.  In  view  of  the  large 
place  given  in  the  later  periods  to  the  work  and  activities  of 
men  and  society,  we  must  believe  that  Royce  counts  the  finite 
individual  as  real.  "  A  "completed  experience"  however  makes 
the  growing,  changing  finite  less  than  real.. 

If  one  is  to  keep  in  touch  with  finite  experience  while  trac- 
ing out  the  logical  boundaries,  it  might  be  objected  that  in 
finite  experience  a  'completed  experience'  is  one  which  has 
ended  and  is  already  past.  Our  experiences  have  that  way 
of  passing  as  they  are  completed.  Just  what  an  experienco 
eternally  complete  and  eternally  present  Would  mean  is  some- 
thing, an  analogy  for  which  I  do  'not  find  in  my  experience. 
On  the  other  hand,  experience  presents  us  with  many  instances 
where  one's  mind  or  purpose  becomes  so  clear-cut  and  well- 
defined  that  as  an  active  purpose  it  functions  without  inner 
change.2  It  has  become  a  fixed  principle.  Finite  experience 
presents  us  with  a  tendency  to  a  reasonable  and  unchanging 
identity  in  the  individual  as  he  embodies  his  life-purpose  ao.d 
produces  novelties  in  life-content.  Might  we  not  think  of  n 
world  infinitely  unfinished,  of  a  fully-defined3  and  hence  ab- 
solutely unchanging  Purpose,  embodying  itself  in  this  uni- 
verse ?  The  identity  would  move  forward  unchanged.  This 
would  leave  room  for  free  individuals  and  a  real  time-experi- 
ence. The  contributions  of  the  free  individual,  however 
infinitesimally  small,  would  yet  be  real.  It  is  enough  at  this 
point  to  show  that  a  real  finite  and  a  completed  'Experience' 
are  incompatible. 


2.  ,H.  A.  Overstreet   (in  The  Phil.  Rev.   1909  p.  7  f.)   has  sought  to  harmonize  thus 

"Change  and  the  Changeless".     This,    a  theory  of  reality,   would  differ  from  that 
of  Boyce  in  not  making  time  unreal.      It  is  a  truly  dynamic  conception. 

3.  It  would  be  necessary  to  note  that  a  fully-defined  purpose  or  principle  in  the  finite 
is  not  one   which   is  formulated   in   exact  detail   as   to   its  future   application.      So 
the  perfectly  defined  Purpose   or  Will  of  the  Absolute  is  not  to  be  conceived  as 
fixing  before-hand  the  complete  manner  of  its  application. 


20  Royce  and  Individualiou 

II. 


According  to  this  logic  of  Prof.  Royce,  he  demonstrates  the 
nature  and  existence  of  a  Being  in  full  and  perfect-union 
with  the  objects  of  his  thought.  The  demonstration  is  based 
on  the  nature  of  finite  thought.  This  logic  is  open  to  question 
for  this  so-called  concrete  union  finds  no  analogy  in  the  finite. 

I  find  in  my  experience  that  the  conditions  of ,  truth  and 
error  involve  in  me  an  ever  widening  knowledge  of  reality.  I 
have  a  focus  in  consciousness  and  it  gives,  no  doubt,  a  short 
stretch  of  direct  experience.  But  attention,  as  I  possess  it. 
must  know  continual  change.  I  find  that  much  of  the  interest 
of  life  consists  in  passing  to  new  phases  of  experience.  That 
which  is  passed  is  carried  over  by  me  in  some  sort  of  represen- 
tative way.  My  experience,  per  se,  does  not  show  any  signs 
of  such  widening  as  might  mean,  as  an  ultimate,  the  one  fixed 
vision  of  the  whole.  The  conditions  of  attention  would  be 
violated  and  the  sense  of  monotony  rather  than  interest  would 
result. 

When  I  look  at  this  direct  experience,  I  find  that  while 
directly  or  concretely  present  it  is  not^  actual  union  with  or 
immanence  of  myself  in  the  objects.  ''"Indeed  the  objects  ever 
remain  beyond  my  thought  which  remains  always  a  thought 
of  realitv^X"  There  is  no  basis  then  for  the  concrete  union 

ascribed  to  Thought. 

/ 

It  is  rather  an  ever  widening  knowledge  of  reality,  rather 
than  experience  of  it,  which  is  found  to  be  significant  in  my 
experience.  There  is  the  difference  between  the  representation 
of  the  thought  of  reality  as  experienced  in  the  past  and  th<? 
present.  It  is  a  difference  <q£  time  rather  than  a  difference 
involving  in  present  experience  a  direct  union  with  reality. 
I  know  I  have  seen  a  book.  It  was  yesterday.  Right  now  I 
see  it  again.  My  thought  has  been  compared  wiffi  the  pc-i^ 
ception  in  either  case.  In*  the  former  case,  psychology  tells 
us  there  comes  up  some  physiological  representative  of  the 
former  perception.  In  the  latter  case,  I  have  the  original  per- 
ception present.  But  now  in  either  case  very  much  more  is 
involved  in  the  physical  book  than  my  perceiving  and  thinking 
of  it.  As  a  concrete  thing  it  has  not  been  in  complete  union 
with  my  thought.  My  perception  of  the  book  indicates  that 
it  is  there  apart  from  any  private  experience  of  mine.  Tho 


Roijcc  and  I  iidicid  nation  '21 

object  of  my  thought  will  not  be  literally  the  book  and  all  it 
actually  is.  But  I  know  that  this  object  of  my  thought,  this 
intellectual  content,  has  reference  to  a  real  object  in  the  exis- 
tent or  physical  world. 

Our  thought,  with  its  problems  of  truth  and  error,  does  imply 
a  completed  unity.  It  is  the  unity  of  a  whole  of  knowledge. 
It  is  not  a  single  and  complete  experience  of  reality,  but  a  com- 
plete knoivledge  of  reality.  But  this  is  an  ideal.  No  doubt 
it  implies  the  bringing  together  of  all  reality  within  a  single 
whole.  It  is  not  however  there  literally  and  physically,  but 
in  knowledge  form.4 

Only  in  this  form  of  a  moving  experience  and  an  accumu- 
lating of  knowledge  of  reality,  do  we  seem  to  do  justice  to 
other  psychological  features.  It  is  not  possible  to  feel  uncer- 
tainty and  certainty  on  the  same  point  and  feel  them  simul-, 
taneously.  All  the  personal  sense  of  ignorance,  evil  or  error, 
implies  other  experiences  in  which  they  may  be  overcome.  My 
actual  feelings  of  ignorance  and  of  recovery  from  it  imply  a 
widening  knowledge  through  further  experiences.  To  crowd 
both  into  a  single  experience  as  contemporaries  is  to  do  injus- 
tice to  the  psychological  coloring  of  the  facts..  A  sense  of  error 
and  of  truth  recovered  belongs  to  a  part  of  reality,  not  to  the 
whole.  The  former  , carries  its  own  coloring  or  feeling  tone 
which  cannot  be  transferred  to  another. 

My  point  is  this,  that  our  thought  is  ever  an  ideal  represen- 
tation of  reality,  never  an  acttfal  or  concrete  union  witji  it 
Logic  cannot  give,  on  th$  basis  of  finite  facts,  such  concrete 
union.  Only  a  conceptual  contrast,  based  on  the  wholeness 
yet  limited  na.ture,  of  finite  experience  as  direct  and  immediate, 
can  give  the  conception  of  some  synoptic  vision  that  in  an  in- 
stant might  envisage  the  totality.  And  such  can  be  but  a  con- 
ception or  imaginative  presentation.. 

If  one  wishes  to  round  out  logically,  on  the  basis  of  finite 
thought,  the  nature  of  reality,  ohe^mi^ht  hold  that  there  is  at 
least  a  society  of  knowers  'or  selves.  Certainly  one  advances 
beyond  his  knowledge  and  its  logic  when  he  postulates  an  all- 
inclusive  Thought  or  Self  consciousness.  We  have  no  finHe 
experience  furnishing  an  analogy  of  a  self  or  consciousness 
having  such  an  experiential  relation  to  the  objects  of  its  thought 

4.     The   Philosophical   Review    (1903)    p.    48    f.    A.    K.    Rogers   on   Prof.    Royce   »nd 

^f  on  ism. 


22  lluyce    and   ludividuation,' 

that  there  is  no  trans-subjective  reference.  Closing  that  gap 
is  not  the  logic  of  existent  facts  but  a  conceptual  construction. 

III. 

The  other  question  left  ambiguous  is  that  of  the  principle 
of  individuatioii.  The  possible  embodiments  of  finite  thought 
seem  indefinitely  many5  when  viewed  conceptually.  'Thought7 
or  the  Absolute  includes  not  only  all  actual  experiences  but  all 
possible  experiences.  This  would  seem  to  mean  'innumerable' 
worlds.  But  we  have  in  reality  one  world.  Reflection  pre- 
sents us  with  alternatives  which,  if  not  equally  acceptable, 
seem  equally  possible.  Royce  discusses8  the  simpler  forms 
of  knowledge  and  indicates  the  positive  or  active  nature  of  the 
mental  process.  The  niind^see^unity  and  simplicity.  Atten 

-  tfon  "fixes  on  only  a  portion  of  the  field  at  a  fiine."     It  makes 
-    a     difference     to     sense-impressions     whether     or     not     they 

are  in  the  focus  of  consciousness.  Attention  is  ac- 
tive hi  increasing  and  diminishing  the  intensity  of 
impressions.  The  measure  of  effort  which  accompanies  atten- 
tion affects  qualitatively  the  impression  received.  "Attention 
is  the  same  activity  that  in  a  more  developed  shape  we  commonly 
call  will."  Attention,  in  thus  narrowing  our  focus,  "makes 
all  our  knowing  and  believing  possible.'7  AJong  with  attention 

-  we  find  recognition.     It  too  tends  to  alter  the  data  of  sense  to- 
wards order  and  simplicity.     Our  interest  also  will  be  seen 
as  affecting  our  resultant  knowledge.     Thus  "the  most  insig- 
nificant knowledge  is  in  some  sense^an  original  product  of  the 

:  man  who  knows.  IiK^t-  is  expressed  his  disposition,  his  power 
of  attentions-Ms  skill  in  recognition,  his  interest  in  reality,  hi? 
creative  might." 

Here  we  have  an  aspect  of  the  finite  which,  with  the  greater 

emphasis  of  the  second  period,  developed  into  the  Voluntarism 

for  which  Royce  stands  in  the  academic  world.     It  explains 

the  selective  nature  of  finite  thought.     But  the  selectiveness  is 

„  0  is*  far  from  absolute.     Other  possibilities  linger  on  the  horizon. 

Reflection  guides  the  finite  individual.     The  sense  of  dirc:c 
tion  is  reached  in  "Moments  of  Insight".     These  short-lived 


Royee,   in  the  next  period,   writes  "It  is  of  the  nature  of  pure  or  abstract  think- 
ing to   deal   with   endless   possibilities."      'The   Conception   of   God'   p.    1^3. 
The   Religion's   Aspect   of   Philosophy,    pp.    308-323. 

F.  H.  Bradley  denied  that  any  of  our  categories  apply  to  the  Absolute.  Royce 
agrees  with  legard  to  physical  categories  only.  The  categories  expressive  of  the 
human  individual  are  applicable.  At  least  he  claims  to  carry  over  these  cate- 
gories. It  is  a  criticism  offered  in  this  thesis  that  the  categories  of  the  finite  are 
not  carried  across 


Royce   and   Individual  ion  ,          2:.> 

moments  reveal  in  ideal  the  fruition  of  the  categories7  followed 
laboriously  by  reflection.  The  'oneness'  of  the  world  is  an 
open  book  in  the  moment  of  insight  but  the  way  to  it  is '  not 
so  clear.  Reflective  thought,  with  its  point  of  departure  in 
finite  fact,  does  not  make  clear  how  'Thought'  constitutes  one 
world  and  finds  complete  fulfilment  in  it.  Reflection  takes  up 
its  task  where  individuation  has  already  done  much  of  its  work 
We  are  conscious  before  we  are  self-conscious. 

The  treatment,  given  above  of  attention  a'nd  recognition 
and  interest,  seems  psychological  rather  than  metaphysical."  In  . 
the  acquisition  of  new  knowledge,  we  are  affected  by  our  previ 
ous  experiences.  We  hold  our  past  in  a  vicarious  way,  in 
images  or  kines thesis  or  in  some  other  symbolic  form.  One 
might  say  that  our  history  is  one  where  each  new  experience 
has  its  effect  on  the  psychic  organism  and  helps  to  constitute  . 
one's  psychic  attitude.  But  I  carry  the  objects  of  my  know- 
ledge in  a  vicarious  way,  not  in  the  concrete  direct  way  of  'im- 
mediate union  with  them  which  is  ascribed  to  'Thought'.  We 
do  not,  in  our  thinking  of  the  world  of  objects,  reach  such 
union  with  the  real  objects  as  to  constitute  or  reconstitute  them 
what  they  are.  Fi'nite  thinking,  as  such,  does  not  imply  this 
individuating  or  constitutive  power  ascribed  to  Thought. 

There  is  a  distinction  which  we  must  not  ignore  between  the  - 
object  as  it  enters  our  limited  life  of  immediate  experience, 
and  the  object  as  it  exists  in  a  world  which  we  reconstruct  in- 
directly by  thought  and  whose  connections  are  independent  of 
our  practical  teleology.  One  must  separate  carefully  between^ 
the  real  world  and  the  knowledge  of  the  world  which  one  p« .  s- 
sesses.  Connections  exist  objectively  in  the  real  world.  But 
in  my  experience  I  make  connections.  Only  in  this  practical, 
teleologicala8  way  does  cause  enter  into  the  constitution  of 
'finite  experience'.  Existence  for  knowledge,  and  existence  for 
experience  are  not  essentially  convertible  terms.  It  seems  to 
me  that  Royce  makes  them  synonymous.  There  is  never  that 
immediate  presence  of  reality  in  the  very  thought-experience 
of  finite  beings.  Reality  is  brought  home  to  us  by  a  thought 


8.  There  may  be  two  meanings  given  to  teleology.  It  may  imply  an  end  to  the 
action  as  a  distinct  result.  Here  the  activity  itself  is  only  a  means  to  that  end. 
All  positive  value  will  lie  in  the  result  —  not  in  the  activity.  This  seems  to  me 
to  make  the  essence  of  reality  a  static  fact.  Progress  would  be  only  a  mere  inci- 
dent in  attaining  the  end.  The  second  meaning  is  that  the  end  is  actually  realiz- 
ing itself  in  life.  There  is  value  in  the  process  per  se.  It  is  not  a  question 
merely  of  a  finished  result  or  attainment.  Royce  in  'Thought',  'Self  or  'Exper- 
ience' seems  to  imply  the  former  type  of  teleology,  whereas  in  finite  experience  it 
is  clearly  tho  latter  which  is  present. 


24:  Royce   and   Individ  nation 

distinct  from  it.  Hence  it  is  no  logic  but  a  bare  contrast  that 
enables  Royce  to  see  in  finite  'experience'  that  which  logically 
implies  an  Absolute,  or  a  direct  and  immediate  experience. 

IV. 

A  further  question  which  will  be  more  fully  treated  in  Part 
II.  relates  to  the  ideal  of  duty  held  up  to  the  finite  individual. 
As  a  part9  of  the  infinite  Subject,  and  on  becoming  aware,  in  iiis 
consciousness,  of  this  relation  to  the  whole,  his  supreme  task 
is  to  will  the  Universal  Will.  He  must  thus  return  into  the 
life  of  the  whole.  < 

One  may  call  this  a  doctrine  of  self-alienation  for  one  must 
seek  "impersonal"10  ends.  Self -consciousness  would  seem  to  carry 
with  it  the  ideal  of  self -negation  or  resignation  as  its  true  direc- 
tion. ISTow  in  theory  this  might  seem  plausible.  But  in  actual 
life  the  springs  of  action  are  ever  personal.  There  will  be 
carried  over  at  the  start  of  a  life  where  the  self  is  sunk  in  the 
universal  will  something  of  the  impetus  which  will  rise  from 
the  choice  as  personal.  But  it  is  true  to  life  that  such  impetus 
will  wane. 

One  might  indeed  donbt  whether  altruism  as  an  ideal  is 
not  both  abstract  and  unreal.  Self-love  takes  many  forms. 
Altruism  is  one  of  them.  It  is  very  doubtful  if  it  is  the 
^highest. 

Royce  notes  that  we  learn  the  meaning  of  the  Divine 
Thought  in  our  consciousness.31  It  will  bear  all  the  marks  of 
a  personal  interpretation  and  of  spontaneous  origination.  How 
one  may  make  another  aware  of  its  impartiality  or  imperson- 
ality seems  problematic.  Xot  only  so  but,  mediated  through 
human  consciousness,  it  will  come  forth  in  all  sorts  of  partial 
forms.  Which  shall  the  individual  follow,  his  own  or 
another's  ?  Which  is  most  like  the  archetype  ? 

Prof.  Royce  would  no  doubt  say  that  no  one  finite  will, 
as  finite,  represents  the  Universal  Will.  It  seems  then  on  d 
will  have  left  just  the  bare,  empty  will  to  have  the  Universal 


9.  In  the   Supplementary  Essay  in  Vol.   I  of  the   Gifford   Lectures  Royce   illustrates 
the  part-whole  relation  from  the  analogy  of  self-representative  systems  in  Mathe- 
matics.    The  part  is  equal  to  or  is  the  image  of  the  whole.     It  may  be  that  Royce 
intends  the  illustration  to  be  more  than  an  analogy.     But  in  a  true  infinite  the 
individuated  eloment  images  the  whole,  not  in  a  wooden  one-to-one  correspondence, 
but  in  a  differentiated  response  to  organic  necessities.      See   on  this  point  Bosan- 
quet  "The  Principle  of  Individunlity  and  Value"  pp.   38,   393  f.     The  mathemati- 
cal system  is   abstract  or  empty   of  content.     The  true  infinite  is  concrete. 

10.  See  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  211,   212,  213.      11.  Ibid.  p.  470. 


lloycc  and   Individuaiwn  25 

Will,  the  will  that  there  shall  be  such  a  Will12  As  this  is  an 
ideal  rather  than  an  embodied  fact,  to  which  one  may  give 
adherence,  it  seems  impossible  to  get  away  actually  from  "per- 
sonal" aims  and  ideals.  If  the  Infinite  Subject  has  individuat- 
ed into  a  world  of  finite  individuals,  will  not  these  'parts'  be 
such  in  reality  only  when  as  'parts'  they  achieve  a  richer  in- 
dividual content?  It  is  something  to  give  one's  life  to  the  whole. 
Can  one  do  more  ?  Yes.  By  having  more  to  give.  This  will 
be  found  in  a  greater  emphasis  on  the  final  value  of  the  personal. 

12.  We  have  here  not  an  attaining  of  a  concrete  will,  but,  by  means  of  a  contrast 
based  on  the  imperfection  or  incompleteness  of  the  finite,  ^an  outlining  in  concep- 
tion of  a  perfect  or  complete  finite.  Thus  we  have  not  escaped  from  the  personal. 


26  Royce   and  Individuatwn 

m 

Period  IL 
CHAPTEE  IV. 
Exposition. 
I. 

In  'The  Conception  of  God',  the  Supplementary  Essay  is 
Eoyce's  answer  to  the  question  on  individuation.  Then  in  the 
Gifford  Lectures,  he  gives  in  complete  form  his  whole  meta- 
physical position. 

The  difference  between  pure  or  abstract  thinking  and  con- 
crete thinking  or  'Thought'  lies  in  the  Will  or  Purpose.1  Pure 
reflection  presents  no  mystery.  In  Will  one  passes  beyond 
the  merely  conceptual  or  the  contemplative.  Will  is  active 
and  involves  other  elements  than  reflection.2  It  is  not  irra- 
tional. Yet  it  may  not  make  explicit  its  implicit  reasons.  So 
the  kernel  of  individuality  is  Will.  Or  better,  the  organiz- 
ing, individuating  principle  is  Will.  "The  satisfied  Will,  as  such, 
is  the  sole  Principle  of  Individuation."3  "Experience  always 
determines  the  infinite  universals  of  thought  to  concrete  in- 
dividual examples.  Thought,  on  the  other  hand,  even  when 
it  defines  the  contents  of  experience,  always  does  so  by  viewing 
them  as  individual  cases  of  an  infinite  series  of  possible  case6."* 
"In  this  sense,  the  individuality,  the  concrete  reality,  of  the 
contents  of  the  Absolute  Experience,  must  be  conceived  as,  on 
the  one  hand,  fulfilling  ideas,  but  as  on  the  other  hand  freely, 
unconstrainedly, — ifyou  will,  capriciously, — embodying  their 
universality  in  the  very  fact  of  the  presence  of  this  life,  this 
experience,  this  world.''5 

The  reality  of  the  Absolute  is  demonstrated  in  the  Eoycean 
way,  by  a  consideration  of  the  relation  of  thought  and  its  ob- 
ject in  connection  with  realistic  theories.  The  'independence* 

1.  In    Munsterberg's    "Grundzuge   der   Psychologic"   pp.    44-45,    it    is   held   that   the 
decisive  step  in  the  mutual  contact  in  experiencing  our  fellow  men,   is  in  the  will 
rather  than  in  the  intellect. 

2.  G.  K.  Chesterton  has  noted  this  when  he  tells  us  that  it  is  idle  to  argue  with  the 
choice   of   the    soul. 

3.  "The  World  and  the  Individual"  vol.   I,  p.   586. 

4.  "The  Conception  of  God"  p.   194.     5.  Ibid.  p.  203.      6.  Ibid.  p.   178.      7.    Ibid, 
p.   186  f.      (Italics  are  mine). 


lloyce   and   Individu&tibn  -2~ 

and  the  'relation'  of  the  objects  /beyond'  indicate  the  larger 
and  inclusive  experience  where  thought  is  adequate  to  the 
object ;  "a  Unity  not  bound  to  the  limitations  of  our  own  flow 
of  successive  and  numerically  separate  experiences,  although 
inclusive,  both  of  this  flow,  and  of  these  various  experiences 
themselves, — in  their  very  fragmentariness, — but  also  in  their 
relationships."8  'Omniscience'  or  'Thought'  is  the  best  term 
"to  define  the  Absolute."7  But  the  purely  theoretical  definition 
must  be  completed.  lie  prepares  for  this  completion  by  an 
examination  of  the  nature  of  finite  Will. 

Will  involves  "Desire,  Choice,  and  Efficacious  Effort."* 
Desire  ftlone  may  be  capricious,  though  desire  is  at  the  root  of 
will.  "Unless  I  first  desire,  I  shall  never  get  any  of  the  more 
complex  a'nd  rational  processes  of  the  will."9  Choice  is  a  more 
rational  level,  but  may  remain  only  a  mental  process.  It  calls 
logically  for  effective  expression.  This  expression  may  he 
estimated  in  kinesthesis  only.  Will  involves  a  higher  element. 
It  is  "Attention".40  Our  voluntary  processes  are,  in  all  their 
grades,  selective  rather  than  inventive.  Consciousness  has  a 
focus  and  to  direct  the  focus  upon  some  part  of  the  field  of 
vision  is  to  cause  that  spot  to  come  out  more  clearly  and  the 
rest  to  sink  into  obscurity.  Attention  is  selective  and,  in  its 
selection,  the  limitless  possibilities  of  fulfilment  of  the  idea 
pass  away  as  the  one  concrete  choice  is  made.  This  significant, 
choice  is  in  the  finite  ever  less,  than  complete.  But  the  direc- 
tion of  will  is  evident.  The  limitless  or  endless  conceptual 
possibilities  become  embodied  in  the  one  concrete.  It.  is  a 
limitation  in  the  abstract  but  a  distinct  expansion  in  the  con- 
crete. "Experience  always  determines  the  infinite  universals 
of  thought  to  concrete  individual  examples."1 

This  conception  of  the  will,  filled  out  logically,  implies  that 
while  we  may  abstractly  think  of  the  ideas  of  the  Absolute  as 
having  infinite  possibilities  of  embodiment ;  yet  there  is  an  Ab- 
solute "Arrest"  of  such  possibilities.  •>  The  one  world  embodies 
fully  the  ideas  of  the  Absolute.  Our  embodiment  of  ideas 
never  attains  this  absolute  arrest.  In  the  case  of  the  Absolute, 
further  conceptual  possibilities  are  absolutely  unreal.  Just 
why  the  one  world  must  thus  realise  fully  the  ideas  of  the 
Absolute,  we  cannot  knowr.  There  is  here  to  the  spectator  the 


8.      The  Conception  of  God,   p.    187.      9.   Ibid.  p.  JL87.      10.   Ibid.    p.    191. 


28  Royce   and  Individuation 

presence  of  'caprice'.12     The  caprice  lies  in  this,  that  the  act 
of  the  will  as  a  mental  process  is  hidden  from  the  onlooker. 

This  embodiment  is  "an  organized,  significant,  purposeful, 
or  teleological,  worthy  perfect  whole  of  fact."13  "The  Will 
individuates  according  to  its  own  needs ;  and  if  it  needs,  for  its 
fulfilment,  free  individuals,  it  will  possess  them."14  The 
Universal  Will  thus  individuates  a  world  of  free  individuals.15 
This  initial  or  eternal  individuation  shows  its  presence  in  the 
finite  individual  in  his  will. .  He  is  a  free  individual. 

This  ability  of  the  finite  selves  to  have  interests  which  are 
focussed, — exclusive  interests, — is  that  which  individuates  in- 
dividuals in  the  time-experience.  In  developing  aims,  objects 
or  ideals,  we  are  out  of  the  chaos  of  more  primitive  levels  of 
life.  -We  are  making  ourselves  significant  individuals.  "It 
is  by  an  individuating  or  exclusive  interest  in  living  one  life, 
for  one  purpose,  that  a  man  becomes  a  moral  individual,  one 
self,  and  not  a  mere  collection  of  empirical  social  contrast 
effects."16  We  are  real  as  we  are  thus  individuated.  To  be 
individual  is  to  "be  unique."17 

Now  while  the  world  of  individuals  has  been  individuated, 
not  by  the  thought  but  by  the  Love,  Interest,  and  Will  of  the  Ab- 
solute, yet  "Divine  Omniscience  is  fulfilled  in  the  world  which 
Divine  Love  individuates."18  Thus  "individuality,  in  such  a 
world  would  neither  be  absorbed  in  one  indistinct  whole  nor 
yet  be  opaque  fact,  for  the  exclusive  Love  of  the  Absolute  for 
this  world  would  render  the  individuality  of  the  fact  secondarily 
intelligible  as  being  the  fulfilment  of  the  very  exclusiveness  of 
the  love."19  In  this  original  endowment  of  individuality  con- 
ferred by  the  Absolute,  the  individual  has  his  distinctiveness.*0 

11.      The  Conception  oi  God,  p.   212.      12.   Ibid.   p.  202.      13.   Ibid.  p.  210. 

14.  "The   Conception  of   God"  p.   271. 

15.  This  view  puts   central   significance   in  God's  Will   or  Purpose  in  the  initial   "sun- 
dering" of  himself.     An  argument  -which  seems  to  have  influenced  Prof.  Royce  to 
make  this  change  of  emphasis  on  the  element  of  Will  is  found  in  the  criticism  by 
Prof.   Le  Conte    (see  "The  Conception  of  God"  p.    76  f.)      Taking  Thought  in  the 
sense  of  thought,   reflective,    contemplative,    'powerless',   he  sees  no  explanation  of 
why   this   particular   sort  of  world   is  the   embodiment  of   that   thought.      He   gives 
his  evolutionary  conception  of  God's  purpose.     Divine  Energy  has  sundered  itself 
in  order  to  have  something  to  contemplate  and  ultimately  to   love.      This  sundered 

"Divine  Energy^  the  immanence  of  God  in  nature,'  rises  through  various  levels  until 
in  man,  in  self-conciousness,  there  is  the  birth  into  the  spiritual  world,  where  man 
holds  communion  with  Deity. 

16.  'The  Conception  of  God'  p.  265. 

17.  "The   Conception   of   God"   p.   268.      18.   Ibid.   p.   259.      19.   Ibid.   p.    266. 

20.  Though  will  is  rooted  in  desire  and,  in  untutored  nature,  is  liable  to  all  sorts  of 
whims  and  caprices,  yet,  in  the  will  of  the  intelligent,  the  caprice  is  not  of  this 
sort.  It  is  the  unpredictable  expression  of  a  free  being.  It  is  necessary  to  note 
that  the  highest  in  man  is  thus  linked  back  to  the  desires  which,  untutored,  give 
'anarchy'.  In  the  true  individual,  desire  is  not  extirpated  but  put  in  its  proper 
place. 


Royce    and  Individual  ion  29 

It  is  not  then  just  as  'thinker'  that  the  finite  individual  is  the 
image  of  the  whole.  ''The  Absolute  individuates  the  lives  of 
A  and  B  by  virtue  of  interests,  of  forms  of  will  and  of  self- 
consciousness,  which  are  different  for  A  and  B."21  Such  in- 
dividuation  is  not  a  mere  fiat  but  appears  in  the  development 
of  individual  will.  "The  individuating  will  of  any  person,  as 
this  person,  is  expressed  from  moment  to  moment,  in  his  more 
or  less  conscious  intention  to  view  his  life  as  a  struggle  towards, 
and  consequently  as  in  contrast  with,  his  ideal  goal."22  The 
Absolute  Will,  in  individuating  a  will,  has  not  predetermined 
in  the  physical  sense  the  temporal  sequence  of  its  acts.23 

II. 

Having  made  definite  his  conception  that  the  world-primary 
is  Purpose  or  Will,  Koyce  gives  us  fri  the  Gifford  Lectures  a 
full  system  of  metaphysics  on  this  basis. 

The  Absolute  is  the  "Individual  of  Individuals"  and  "the 
satisfied  Will,  as  such,  is  the  sole  Principle  of  Individuation."24 

Royce  approaches  the  problem  of  the  nature  of  reality 
through  the  medium  of  ideas.  His  first  question  is  not,  What 
is  reality  ?  but  "What  is  an  Idea  ?  and  How  can  Ideas  stand 
in  &ny  true  relation  to  reality?25  To  start  with  reality  makes  fail- 
ure certain.  "Begin  by  accepting the  mere  brnte 

reality  of  the  world  as  fact,  and  there  you  are,  sunk  in  an  ocean- 

of  mysteries The  world  as  fact  now  bewilders  you .  . 

by  a  chaos  of  unintelligible  fragments  and  of  scattered 

events;  now  it  lifts  up  your  heart  with  wondrous  glimpses  of 
ineffable  goodness,  and  now  it  arouses  your  wrath  by  frightful 

signs  of  cruelty  and  baseness."     It  is  a  "defiant  mystery 

persistently  baffling,  unless  we  find  somewhere  the  key  to  it."20 

We  must  "assert  the  primacy  of  the  world  as  Idea  over  the 
World  as  Fact,"  and  "deal  with  the  problem  of  reality  from 
the  side  of  the  means  through  which  we  are  supposed  to  be 
able  to  -attain  reality,  that  is,  from  the  side  of  Ideas."  "What 
then  is  a'n  Idea  f  and  how  can  an  Idea  be  related  to  Real- 
ity ?"27 


21. "The  Conception  of  God"  p.   312.      22.    Ibid.   p.   316.      23.   Ibid.    p.    317. 

24.  "The  World  and  the  Individual"  vol.   I,   pp.   40   nnd   586. 

25.  "The  World  and  the  Individual"  I,  p.  16.     26.  Ibid.I,  pp.   17,   18.     27.   Ibid.   I, 

p.    1». 


30  lloyce   and  liidiridualion 

The  essence  of  an  idea  does  not  consist  in  representing  a 
fact  existent  beyond  itself.  This  is  the  ordinary  view.  Its 
primary  and  inner  character  does  not  lie  in  the  objective  refer-'"' 
ence,  in  that  it  images  or  symbolizes  or  in  any  other  way  indi- 
cates external  facts  or  events.  Ideas  express  the  active  side 
of  life  rather  than  the  receptive  or  sensory.  The  elements  con- 
stituting our  ideas  have  been  selected  under  the  .guidance  of  a 
purpose.  It  is  the  voluntary  purpose  that  organizes  the  ele- 
ments of  an  idea  into  a  unity  as  well  as  chooses  them.  Ideas 
are  primarily  'plans  of  action'  and  represent  intentions.  "Ideas 
have  the  significance  of  an  act  of  will."  In  brief  an  idea  is 
"any  state  of  consciousness  whether  simple  or  complex,  which, 
when  present,  is  then  and  there  viewed  as  at  least  the  partial 
expression  or  embodiment  of  a  single  conscious  purpose,"28  A 
pen  is  really  defined  by  its  use.  The  intrinsic  meaning  of  it 
flows  from  the  purpose  of  an  agent. 

Ideas  are  secondarily  representative  of  objects.  This  'exter- 
nal' or  objective  meaning  would  seem  to  be  the  one  of  most 
significance.  Validity  and  value  as  truth  cannot  belong  to  an 
idea  through  conformity  with  a  mere  purpose.  It  must  indi- 
cate the  nature  of  an  object.  However,  much  voluntary  selec- 
tion may  operate  in  the  constitution  and  arrangement  of  the 
contents  of  an  idea,  the  function  of  the  idea  is  to  express  the 
truth  and  to  conform  to  facts.  And  facts  are  stubborn  and,  at 
least  on  the  surface,  indifferent  to  the  purposes  and  intentions 
of  individuals.  Indeed,  the  value  of  an  idea  as  a  vehicle  of 
objective  truth  seems  to  be  destroyed  just  in  the  degree  to  which 
it  is  observed  to  be  subservient  to  an  individual's  will.  It 
would  seem,  therefore,  that  the  purpose  with  which  we  form 
our  conceptions  of  objects  is  not  relevant  to  their  truth.  Our 
knowledge  must  conform  to  facts,  not  the  facts  to  our  desires; 
and  in  this  respect  there  is  the  strongest  contrast  between  the 
'intrinsic  meaning'  and  the  objective  reference  of  an  idea. 

This  is  the  "world-knot"20  and  is  a  contrast  which  Koyce 
would  heighten.  But  he  would  reduce  it  by  reducing  the  ex- 
ternal meaning,  qua  external,  into  mere  appearance;  and  then 
representing  it  as  an  aspect  of  the  internal  meaning.  The  ex- 
ternal meaning  is  simply  the  internal  meaning  imperfectly  un- 
derstood. "Our  final  result  will  simply  reabsorb  the  secondary 

_  • 

28.  "The  World  and  the  Individual.  I  .pp.    22,   23.      29.   Ibid.   I.   p.   35.      30.  Ibid .    I. 


Royce   and  Individual  ion  31 

*- 

aspect,  the  external  meaning,  into  the  completed  primary  as- 
pect, — the  completely  embodied  internal  meaning  of  the  idea. 
The  final  meaning  of  every  complete  idea,  when  fully  embodied, 
must  be  viewed  as  wholly  an  internal  meaning."3 

If  to  the  ordinary  human  consciousness  objects  appear  to 
be  independent  of  man's  purposes,  and  to  determine  his  ideas 
for  him,  that  arises  simply  from  his  imperfect  comprehension 
J  of  what  both  his  will  and  objects  mean.  The  more  fully  he 
interprets  them,  that  is  to  say,  the  more  intelligent  his  purpose 
becomes,  and  the  better  he  comprehends  objects,  the  more  the 
purpose  and  the  facts  will  be  found  to  approach  one  another. 
"I  shall  not  only  imitate  my  object  as  another  and  correspond 
to  it  from  without.  I  shall  become  one  with  it,  and  so  inter- 
nally possess  it."  "The  real  world  is  just  our  whole  will  em- 
bodied."31 

But  we  only  partially  know  our  own  will,  and,  in  conse- 
quence, we  find  it  obstructed  by  that  which  appears  to  be  en- 
tirely foreign  and  other  to  us,  by  'brute  facts'.  But  the  process 
of  comprehending  facts  strips  them  of  their  otherness,  explains 
away  their  indifference,  and  foreignness,  brings  them  into  our 
own  intelligent  lives,  makes  them  part  of  our  living  experience, 
and  constitutes  them  into  expressions  of  our  conscious  purpose. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  process  explaining  the  world  as 
our  "embodied  purpose"  is  the  process  of  explicating  the  im- 
plicit significance  of  our  own  will,  till  at  last  we  find  it  is  co- 
extensive with  real  being.  "Our  theory  will  identify  ignor- 
ance of  reality  with  finite  vagueness  of  meaning,"  will  assert 
that  the  very  absolute,  in  its  fulness  of  life,  is  even  now  the 
object  that  you  really  mean  by  your  fragmentary  passing  ideas, 
and  that  the  defect  of  your  present  human  form  of  consciousness 
lies  in  the  fact  that  you  just  now  do  not  know  precisely  what 

•  «  00 

you  mean. 

Now  this  absorption  of  the  external  meaning  of  ideas  in  the 
'internal  meaning  is  to  do  away  with  the  distinction  between 
external  objects  and  conscious  volitions,  and  to  represent  the 
world  of  reality  simply  as  the  expresion  of  an  intelligent  will. 
Further  to  represent  the  'real  world  as  just  our  whole  will 
^embodied'  is  to  identify  man  with  the  Absolute,  and  to  make* 
his  finitude  a  mere  appearance,  an  accident  due  to  his  ignor- 

p.   34.      31.   Ibid.   T,   pp.   37,   38.      32.   Ibid.   I.   p.   39.      33.   Ibid.    I,   p.    38.    34. 


32  Hoyce   and  I -tid-iv  id-nation 

ance.  It  may  be  an  appearance  from  which  he  can  never  en- 
tirely free  himself,  for  he  may  be  endlessly  engaged  in  over- 
coming this  ignorance,  to  which  the  contrast  between  inner  and 
outer  is  due.  Yet  his  destiny,  were  it  fulfilled,  is  to  "face 
Being",  to  "become  one  with  it,  and  so  internally  to  possess  it"33 
This  identification  of  the  world  with  man's  will  and  man's  will 
with  the  Absolute  is  the  very  means  of  securing  the  individual- 
ity, the  unique  personal  existence  of  both  man  and  God.  God 
is  the  "Individual  of  Individuals.7734  And  seeing  that  man  is 
will,  his  individual  rational  life,  in  the  process  of  comprehend- 
ing the  world  more  and  more  fully,  ever  deepens  within  itself 
into  greater  inner  determinateness  and  unity  with  itself.  He 
becomes  free  of  the  whole  world,  for  the  whole  world 
is  his  own,  and  the  enactment  of  his  personal  intelligent 
will.  This  man's  action  is  "as  unique  as  is  the  whole  divine 
life,  as  free  as  is  the  whole  meaning  of  which  the  world  is  an 
expression."  It  is  one  with  the  divine  life.  "When  I  thus 
consciously  and  uniquely  will,  it  is  I,  then,  who  just  here  am 
God's  will."38 


Ibid.    I,   p.    40.      35.    Ibid.    I,   pp.   468,    469. 


lioyce  and  Individ  nation  33 

CIIAPTKR    V. 

Critical. 

L 

With  Will  as  the  principle  of  iiidividuatiou  there  is  a  diffi- 
culty similar  to  that  where  thought  was  held  to  be  the  principle. 
"A  will,  or  a  purpose,  can  never  be  the  whole  of  the  world. 
A  purpose  always  means  that,  founding  yourself  on  matter 
accepted  as  a  basis,  you  recognize  a  certain  alteration  as  essen- 
tial, in  view  of  the  admitted  situation,  for  the  restoration  or 
partial  restoration  of  harmony."1  Such  at  least  i^ 
finite  purpose.  It  is  "a  partial  phenomenon  within  a 
totality."  All  processes  of  will  imply  the  contrast  be- 
tween existence  as  it  comes  to  us  in  the  here  and  now  of  actual 
feeling,  and  existence  as  it  should  be.  and  as  we  seek  to  make 
it,  for  the  satisfaction  of  our  various  impulses,  cravings  and 
desires.  In  an  experience  where  the  aspects  of  ideality  and 
real  existence  are  once  for  all  finally  united,  thought  complet- 
ed, will  fulfilled  or  embodied,  we  are  giving  to  'will'  and 
'thought'  meanings  not  in  ordinary  usage.2  We  have  obscurity 
then  in  Will  as  the  principle  of  iiidividuation.  The  logical 
demonstration  of  Will  as  completely  satisfied  and  fulfilled  is 
based  oai  facts  of  finite  experience.  Yet  a  finished  world  is 
not  in  accord  with  the  nature  of  will3  as  we  know  it. 

Will  in  the  finite  has  still  another  phase.  Xot  only  do  we 
regard  will  as  in  process  of  embodying  itself,  but  as  purpose, 
in  its  exact  definition,  we  think  of  will  as  growing  more  definite 


1.  Bosanquet   "The  Principle  of  Individuality  and   Value",   p.   391.      See  also  A.   E. 
Taylor,   "Elements  of  Metaphysics"  p.  410   f. 

2.  In   Spinoza's   Ethics  I,    17.   Sen.   we  read,    "If  intellect  and  volition  belong  to   the 
eternal   essence   of   God   each    of   these   attributes  must   differ   toto   caelo  from   our 
will  and  intellect,"  See  also  F.  H.  Bradley,   "Truth  and  Reality"  96  f.  "Will  must 

imply  something  in  the  self,  or  beyond  the  self,  which  is  other  than  will  and  apart 
from  this  'other'  I  cannot  find  any  sense  or  meaning  in  the  "will*  either  of  man 
or  God."  See  also  p.  350  note. 

3  Prof.  Howison  sees  danger  in  basing  will  in  any  sense  on  desire,  or  of  finding  its 
roots  in  desire  (see  The  Conception  of  God,  p.  187  f.  Royce's  dialectic  of  Will). 
He  thinks  such  a  relation  opens  the  door  to  possible  anarchy  (see  Report  of  the 
Philosophical  Association  for  1915,  in  the  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and 
Scientific  Method,  Feb.  17th,  1916,  p.  99).  He  would  find  the  basis  of  origina- 
tion in  man  in  "rational  self -activity."  (The  Conception  of  God,  p.  321.  Ed. 
note).  Will  is  not  indeterminate  in  any  direction.  Selective  attention  is  motivat- 
ed. Howison  believes  we  are  forced  back  in  search  of  cognitive  grounds  of 
choice.  Royce  would  acknowledge  the  presence  of  other  influences  than  the  putely 
T>psir«->  and  instinct  nro  present 


34  JkOyrc   and    1  ndirid  nation 

and  adequate.  The  'Arrest'  we  find  in  will  is  not  so  much 
that  which  absolutely  precludes  all  other  embodiment  but  that 
arrest  which  perfect  definition  gives  to  the  purpose.  Might 
we  not  think  of  the  Absolute  as  a  fully  defined  Purpose,  exist- 
ing not , as  a  mere  ideal  but  as  being  embodied  is  an  infinitely 
unfinished  world?4  Part  II.  will  deal  more  fully  with  this 
point. 

II. 

As  noted  in  the  criticism  of  Period  I,  a  "completed  exper- 
ience" leaves  no  real  place  for  free  individuals.  While  Thought 
individuated  the  world,  the  finite  was  still  capable  of  valivl 
thinking.  As  reflection  it  was  'powerless'  and  indeed  sought 
no  power. 

But  if  Will  individuates  the  world  and  embodies  itself  com- 
pletely, there  is  no  room  for  real  will  in  the  finite.  "Whoever 
is  possessed  of  any  meaning,  whoever  faces  truth,  whoever  rat- 
ionally knows,  has  before  his  consciousness  at  once,  that  which 
possesses  the  unity  of  a  knowing  process,  and  that  which  fulfils 
a  purpose,  or  in  other  words,  that  which  constitutes  what  we 
have  from  the  outset  called  an  act  of  will  as  well  as  an  act  of 
knowledge.7'5  Does  this  mean  more  than  getting  a  clearly  de- 
fined thought,  ideal  or  purpose  be'ore  the  mind  ?  If  it  implies 
an  active  effort  to  embody  the  will,  then  in  a  'closed  universe' 
such  effort6  is  unaccounted  for  and  its  results  are  negligible 
and  temporal  replicas  of  the  eternal  realities. 

I  IT. 

With  regard  to  the  finite  as  'part'  we  are  no  further  ahead 
than  in  the  earlier  period.     Neglecting  there  the  doctrine  of 


Bosanquet  (Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  113  f.)  takes  the  ground  that 
if  observation  and  experience  of  our  formed  individual  character  are  adequate  one 

can  predict  the  expression  of  will.  Royce  would  say,  I  think,  that  if  one  had  the 
complete  situation  one  might  predict.  Thei'e  seems  no  clear  cut  line  between 
'rational  self -activity'  and  less  rational  stages  in  mental  development.  Royce 

is  urging  for  the  expression  in  will  of  the  whole  personality. 

4  Prof.  James  in  his  Essay,  "The  Dilemma  of  Determinism"    (The  Will  to  Believe, 
p.   181)    has  compared  our  relation  to  the  universe  to  that  of  the  unskilled  player 
and  the  skilled  one.     The  latter  knows  not  ahead  the  moves  of  the  opponent,  but 
he  knows  he  himself  will  win. 

5  The  World  and  the  Individual  I,  433  f. 

6  James  Seth  in  a  review  of  "The  Conception  of  God"  in  the  Philosophical  Review 
(1898)   p.  312,  says  "Will  is  after  all  only  'appearance'  in  man,   its  reality  is  the 
Will  of  God." 


Itoyce  and  Iiidividuatiou  3.~> 

the  closed  universe,  it  was  noted  that  the  finite  could  know  his 
relation  as  a  'part'  of  the  whole,  and  could  know  that  the  whole 
is  the  expression  of  a  Universal  Will.  .As  a  'part'  of  this  Will, 
the  activity  in  time  open  to  the  part  was  to  return  to  the  whole 
from  which  it  had  been  individuated.  This  doctrine  of  duty 
seemed  a  doctrine  of  self-alienation. 

In  this  second  period  the  position  is  unchanged.7  "In  all 
this  my  own  struggle  with  evil,  wherein  lies  my  comfort?  .  I 
answer,"  my  true  comfort  can  never  \ie  in  my  temporal  attain- 
ment of  my  goal.  For  it  is  my  first  business,  as  a  moral  agent, 
and  as  a  servant  of  God,  to  set  before  myself  a  goal  that,  in 

time,  simply  cannot  be  attained Wherein  can  comfort 

truly  be  found?  I  reply.  In  the  consciousness,  first,  that  the 
ideal  sorrows  of  our  finitude  are  identically  God's  own  sor- 
rows    and  in  the  assurance,  secondly,  that  God's  ful- 
filment in  the  eternal  order  is  to  be  won  through  the  very 

Bitterness  of  tribulation through  this,  my  tribulation."8 

In  this  my  attitude  there  is  resignation,  acceptance  rather  than 
any  active  control.  I  am  loyal  to  the  Universal  Will  even  if 
I  do  not  comprehend  it.9 


7  On  this  point  see  W.  E.  Hocking,   "The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience" 
p.  498   f.     "It  seems  to  me  that  Royce  has  brought  this  principle  of  altruism  to 

ita  philosophic  fulfilment." 

8  The  World  and  the  Individual,  pp.  407,  408. 

9  This  point  is  dealt  with  fully  in  Part  II. 


36  Huyce   and  I  ndimduation 

Period  IIL 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Exposition. 

I 

In  'The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty7  (1907)  we  have  Royce's 
first  attempt  to  deal  directly  with  the  question  of  ethics  since1 
his  first  book.  The  latter  dealt  with  the  subject  only  in  outline 
with  the  ulterior  aim  of  showing  the  implication,  in  the  'moral 
demand',  of  a  Universal  Will.  This  later  book  is  a  more 
complete  dealing  with  the  ethical  ideal.  The  earlier  work 
carried  the  implication  that  the  social  was  a  somewhat  tempor- 
ary2 means  of  awakening  in  a  man  the  recognition  of  his  true 
relation  to  the  Absolute.  This  later  book  develops  the  question 
of  man's  relations  to  man.  It  proves  to  be  more  than  a  tem- 
porary or  temporal  phase..  The  social  is  the  real.  It  is  a 
matter  of  indifference  whether  we  view  Reality  as  the  Absolute 
or  as  the  Community.3  In  the  earlier  work,  "independence  is 
a  temporary  means,  whose  ultimate  aim  is  harmony  and  unity 
of  all  men  on  a  higher  plane."4  In  the  third  period  the  social 
is  eternal  and  hence  distinctiveness  is  not  merely  temporal.  In 
the  earlier  work  the  finite  individual  is  temporal  and  derived. 
In  the  last  work  the  individual  is  eternal  and  underived.5 

In  the  second  period  the  individual  is  eternal  and  derived. 
Immortality  is  ascribed  to  the  individual.  But  its  statement 
is  not  unambiguous.  While  the  "moral  ego  really  is  unful- 
filled"6 individuality  persists  as  a  "finite  life"  in  time.  Attain- 
ing the  goal  in  time  means  the  end.  So  immortality  means  a 
goal  ever  unattained.  But  on  the  other  hand  the  aim  is  eter- 
nally attained.  Immortality  as  a  doctrine  presents  these  two- 
aspects.  "Temporal  categories  are  wholly  inadequate  to  cx- 


1  Soo   tho   Philosophy   of  Loyalty,    p.    ix. 

2  See  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Pihlosopohy,  p.  478.      "We  know  nothing  about  per- 
sonal immorality."      See  also  440. 

3  See   the  Problem  of  Christianity,    I,   pp.   xxxvi,   409,   II,    11. 

4  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  216. 

5  If  we  choose  as  alternative  "the  Divine  Community". 


Rotjcc   and   Indtvidualioii  ''7 

press  the  ultimate  facts  of  life."7     We  have  here  an  unmediat- 
ed  contrast  between  time  and  eternity. 

This  position  is  restated  in  The  World  and  the  Individual/ 
"In  Eternity  all  is  done,  and  we  too  rest  from  our  labors.  In 
Time  there  is  no  end  to  the  individual  ethical  task."  We  are 
assured  that  "Philosophy  here  supports  tradition.  This  is  a 
moral  world.  All  moral  battles  get  fought  out.  All  quests 
are  fulfilled.  The  goal  —  yes,  your  individual  goal  —  is  by  you 
yourself  attained  in  the  eternal  life.  You,  yourself,  and  not 
merely  another,  consciously  know  in  the  eternal  world  the  at- 
tainment of  that  goal."9  This  oscillation  between  'eternal'  and 
'temporal'  leaves  the  matter  ambiguous,  f  find  it  impossible 
to  make  Royce's  meaning  clear  to  myself.  I  can  but  accept  his 
word  that  "this  Eternal  Now  is  simply  not  the  temporal  pre' 


It  appears  it  is  necessary  to  see  that  "the  true  distinction 
and  the  true  connection,  between  the  temporal  and  the  eternal 
aspects  of  Being,  furnish,  in  truth,  the  basis  for  a  solution  of 
this  whole  problem."11  Yet  the  distinction  and  connection  are 
not  made  clear.  One  welcomes  then  the  chance  of  escape  from 
these  dark  sayings  as  offered  in  the  position  of  the  third  period. 
Here  we  may  regard  the  ultimate  as  'the  Divine  Community'1" 
and  hence  the  need  is  gone  of  seeking  to  hold  together  two  such 
incommensurable^  as  'temporal'  and  'eternal'. 

In  the  earlier  work  we  read  "the  moral  insight,  insisting 
upon  the  need  of  the  harmony  of  all  human  wills,  shows  xi? 
that,  whatever  the  highest  human  good  may  be,  we  can  only 
attain  it  together,  for  it  involves  harmony   ......   Either  the 

highest  good  is  for  man  unattainable,  or  the  humanity  of  the 
future  must  get  it  in  common.     Therefore  the  sense  of  com- 
munity, the  power  to  work  together,  with  clear  insight  into  our 
reasons  for  so  working,  is  the  first  need  of  humanity   ...... 

Extend  the  moral  insight  among  men."1  "This  extension  of 
the  moral  insight  is  best  furthered  by  devotion  to  our  individual 
vocations,  coupled  with  strict  loyalty  to  the  relations  upon 
which  society  is  founded."14  This  sense  of  community,  as 


6  Tho   Conception  of  God,   p.   323   f.      Ibid.   p.   326. 

8  Tho  World  and  the  Individual,   II,   p.   444  f. 

9  The  Conception  of  God,   p.  326.      10.  Ibid,   p,   348. 

11  The   World   and    the   Individual,    II.    347. 

12  See  the  Problem  of  Christianity,   I,   pp.  xxxvi,   409;    II,   p.   11. 

13  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,   p.   275.      14.   Ibid.   p.   473.    See  also  p.    V. 


08  lioycc   and   Individuaiion 

conscious,  while  coming  later  than  a  conscious  sense  of  separate- 
ness,  is  more  fundamental.  In  this  earlier  period  the  relation 
of  separateness  and  community  is  temporal  only  and,  the  former 
is  produced  only  to  be  resigned  for  the  latter.  In  the  latest 
period  distincti^eness  and  community  are  co-eternal.  , 

In  the  first  period  the  Absolute  is  One  Will  appearing  in 
the  temporal  order  as  many  wills.  In  the  second  the  many 
persist  in  some  sense  as  immortal.  In  the  oscillation  between 
the  temporal  and  the  eternal,  it  is  not  clear  whether  the  individ- 
ual has  some  form  of  temporal  existence  after  the  death  or  the 
body.  If  it  has  reached  the  end  and  yet,  while  no  longer  tem- 
poral,, has  an  eternal  form  of  persistence,  then  the  fact  can  be 
stated  only.  What  that  'eternal7  is  you  cannot  know  "in  so 
!  far  as  you  remain  on  this  shoal  of  time."15  Are  we  not  given 
a  contrast  here  instead  cf  logic?  In  the  third  period  along 
with  the  older  Absolutism  wre  have  an  alternative  position  of- 
fered us.  The  unity  and  plurality  are  co-eternal.  Just  how 
the  unity  remains  as  uniquely  individual  as  in  the  earlier 
periods  is  not  made  clear.16  Unity  and  plurality  are,  at  any 
rate,  two  aspects  of  the  same  reality.  Here  we  seem  to  escape, 
through  the  alternative,  from  the  obscurities  of  the  eternal 
derivation  of  the  individual.  If  plurality  is  ultimate  then 
individuals  are  ultimate  and  hence  underived.  "A  community 
immediately  presents  itself  to  our  minds,  both  as  one  and  as 
many  and  unless  it  is  both  one  and  many  it  is  no  community 
at  all.'717  We  have  then  in  this  alternative  position  only  that 
individuation  which  consists  in  the  development  of  the  individ- 
ual as  ultimate.  And  individuation  in  time  is  still  mediated 
through  the  individual  consciousness.18 

II. 

In  this  later  period  we  have  monism  and  pluralism  rather 
externally  joined  together.  A  general  impression  is  that  Royce 
has  retreated  from  his  extreme  Absolutism.  But  we  have  a 
clear  attempt  to  unite  that  extreme  position  to  his  later  empha- 

Also  The  Conception  of  God,   pp  278  f.,   320   f. 

15  The   Conception   of    God,    p.    326. 

16  The  attempt  is   made  by   the  ascription   to   fumily,    social   or  other   higher   unities 
of   an   individuality   more   concrete   than   is   that   of   the   individual   man.     Even   a 
crowd  has  a  'mind.'     It  is  impossible  to  locate  this  mind  except  in  the  individuals. 
'Public   spirit'   is  a  figurative  expression.     Only  citizens   as   individuals   possess   it. 

17  The  Problem  of  Christianity.   II,   p  17. 


U 

• 


\ 

Royce   (o:d   Individuation  '  3D 

sis  on  the  individual  as  social.     And  the  attempt  results  in  his 
usual  oscillation. 

The  individual,  as  we  have  just  noticed,  exercises  his  own 
initiative  in  choice.  Yet  he  is  social.  Now  we  have  at  time : 
these  social  unities,  in  which  man  is  found,  regarded  as  ideal10 
This  still  leaves  the  individual  as  the  maker  of  his  own  destiny. 
Then  we  have  them  drawn  out  before  us  as  over-individuals, 
with  minds,  etc.  Just  how  the  freedom  of  the  individual  i* 
preserved  here20  is  obscure.  We  are  told  that  "we  all  of  us 
believe  that  there  is  any  real  world  simply  because  we  find 
ourselves  in  a  situation  in  which,  because  of  the  fragmentary 
nd  dissatisfying  conflicts ,  antitheses,  and  problems  of  our 
present  ideas,  an  interpretation  of  this  situation  is  needed, 
but  is  not  now  known  to  us.  By  the  'real  world'  we  mean 
simply  the  'true  interpretation  of  this  our  problematic  situation. 
~No  other  reason  can  be  given  than  this  for  believing  that  there 
is  any  real  world  at  all."21  Yet  we  read  aa  community,  when 
unified  by  an  active  indwelling  purpoe,  is  an  entity  more  con^ 
crete,  and,  in  fact  less  mysterious  than  is  any  individual  man 
and  that  such  a  community  can  love  and  be  loved  as  a  husband 
and  wife  love;  or  as  father  or  mother  love."22  A  "corporate 
entity  is  something  more  concrete  than  is  the  individual  fol- 
low man."23  Or  "if,  by  person,  you  mean  a  live  unity  of  know- 
ledge and  of  will,  of  love  and  of  deed, — then  the  community 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is  a  person  on  a  higher  level  than 
is  the  level  of  any  human  individual."24  Just  how  such  en- 
tities are  more  concrete  than  the  individuals  in  whose  conscious- 
ness they  appear  as  ideals  seems  obscure.  If  the  community 
has  such  concrete  existence  and  is  endowed  with  mind  and  will, 
then  supreme  power  over  its  members  is  the  logical  conclusion. 

18  See   The  Religious  Aspect   of   Philosophy,   p.    470.. 
Also   The  Problem   of  Christianity,    Jl.    p.    60. 

10   See  Ibid.  II,  p.  79,  it  is  a  "conseiousr.ess  of  Unity"  and  "a  common  life  in  time." 

Sea  also  II,  p.  88,   II,  264. 

20.  Prof.  Dewey  in  his  book  on  "German  Philosophy  and  Polities'  shows  that  Prus- 
sia has  taken  literally  this  over-individuality  and  hence  ascribes  to  the  State 
sxipreme  power  over  the  citizen.  When  Royce  is  emphasi/.ing  the  more  monistic 
side  of  his  position  he  seems  open  to  Dewey's  criticisms. 

21  Tho  Problem  of  Christianity,  II,  p.  264  f.  22.  Ibid.  I,  p.  95.  23.  Ibid.  I,  p. 
94.  See  I,  64,  where  he  cites  Wundt  approvingly  as  saying  that  organized  com- 
munities are  psychical  entities.  Or  I,  62,  "a  community  is  a  sort  of  live  unit, 

that  has  organs,  as  the  body  of  an  individual  has  organs it  has  a  mind  of 

its  own." 

The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  p.  313.  The  Absolute  is  viewed  as  "one  unity  of 
consciousness,  wherein  countless  unities  are  synthesized."  o.c.  p.  310  "Our  Social 
organization  as  personal  unities  of  consciousness."  o.c.  p.  311.  From  this  point 
of  view  we  are,  and  we  have  our  worth,  by  virtue  of  our  relation  to  a  conscious- 
ness of  a  type  superior  to  the  human  type."  See  also  The  Sources  of  Religious 
Insight,  p.  201. 

24   The   Problem  of  Christianity,    I.    352. 


40  lloycc   and  Individuatiofa 

This  unmediated  relation  between  community  and  unity 
holds  throughout  and  as  the  unity  intended  has  been  found  un- 
satisfactory in  the  discussion  of  the  earlier  periods,  one  can 
exercise  the  privilege  of  choice  and  select  that  view 
which  is  more  just  to  the  individual  since  such  is  our  starting 
point.  If  man  is  social  in  his  essential  nature  both  temporally 
and  eternally,  there  need  be  no  such  concrete  and  unitary  per- 
sonal mind  inclusive  of  his. 

We  shall  count  these  communities  as  spiritual,  and  more 
ideal  yet  than  actual,  and  based  in  the  essentially  social  nature 
of  men.  In  the  first  period  all  are  to  use  personal  choice  in 
deciding  to  "act  as  one  being."25  Here  we  surely  have  an  ideal 
or  a  formal  principle.  This  choice  is  exercised  only  in  the 
temporal  since  immortality  is  not  known..  In  the  last  period 
the  choice  of  ideals  is  a  permanent  feature  of  individual  life. 
The  individuality. of  the  'part7  persists,  since  community  as 
such  is  ultimate  and  eternal. 

III. 

Choosing  this  alternative  position,  individuation  is  tho 
problem  of  developing  the  potential.  It  is  a  social  potential. 
We  realize  it  in  the  service  of  'causes'.  The  'highest'  ideal  of 
life  is  to  be  "loyal  not  for  the  sake  of  the  good  that  we  private- 
ly get  out  of  loyalty,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  good  of  the  cause, — 
this  higher  unity  of  experience, — gets  out  of  this  loyalty.""0 
This  conceiving  of  a  gulf  between  any  true  self-satisfaction  and 
a  disinterested  service  of  a  cause  is  an  abstraction  and  is  evi- 
dence of  that  one-sidedness  in  ethical  theory  which  I  have  called 
self-alienation.  It  docs  not  seem  to  be  a  necessary  feature 
of  the  life  of  the  individual  in  the  community..  This  seems 
to  me  to  emphaize  the  persistent  variety  of  interests  and  aims 
rather  than  the  monotony  of  an  ultimate  unit  of  aim  and  pur- 
pose. This  self-alienation  as  discussed  in  connection  with  the 
first  period,  seems  to  me  a  view  foisted  on  the  individual  by  the 
necessities  of  an  Absolutism  not  really  found  in  finite  experi- 
ence. Here  also  in  the  third  period  in  spite  of  the  alternative 
offered  between  Monism  and  Pluralism,  the  monistic  ethical 

/  V 

ideal  is  present. 

This  is  the  highest  ideal  since,  "I,  myself  am  a  fragmentary 
conscious  life  that  is  included  within  the  conscious  conspectus 

25  xThe   Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,    p.    193. 

26  'The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  p.   312. 


lloyce   and   Individual  ion  1  ! 

of  the  world's  experience,  and  that  is  in  one  self-conscions 
unity  with  that  world-consciousness."27  I  am  to  find  my  high- 
est life  in  "a  practical  service  of  superhuman  objects."28  Thi . 
service  is  ever  one  which  I  personally  am  to  choose.  Hence 
"the  unity  of  the  world  is  not  an  ocean  in  which  we  are  lost 
but  a  life  which  is  and  which  needs  all  our  lives  in  one."20 
Here  we  have  a  juxta-position  of  the  concrete  and  the  ideal. 
The  'life  is'  and  yet  needs  our  efforts. 

Our  task  as  free  individuals  in  this  higher  unity  is  to  be- 
come individuals.  The  meaning  of  life  comes  in  some  degree 
at  first,  "through  some  authority  external  to  our  wills"30  and 
ever  "in  so  far  as  our  moral  training  is  incomplete,  the  moral 
law  may  at  any  moment  have  to  assume  afresh  this  air  of  exter- 
nal authority  merely  in  order  to  win  our  due  attention."31  The 
truly  right  or  wrong  act,  however,  calls  for  the  activity  of 
conscience  in  the  individual  himself.  "My  duty  is  simply  my 
own  will  brought  to  my  clear  self-consciousness."32 

Now  "by  nature,  apart  from  any  specific  training,  I  have 
no  personal  will  of  my  own."33  "Plans  of  life  come  to  us  in 
connection  with  our  endless  imitative  activities"34  which  are 
however  never  merely  imitative  for  "conformity  attracts  but 
also  wearies  us."3  But  "social  conformity  gives  us  social 
power."3 '  Thus,  in  interaction,  one  comes  to  consciousness  of 
who  and  what  he  is.  One  is  actually  individuated  in  the 
growth  in  the  individual  of  the  sense  of  individuality  and  its 
power  of  service. 

This  individuation,  marking  man's  social  dependence  or 
interdependence,  is  indicative  of  the  direction  of  his  true  life. 
I  do  not  give  up  my  will  but  my  highest  achievement  is  to 
choose  freely  and  with  personal  satisfaction  the  will  of  the 
higher  unity.  The  patriot  is  one  who  "has  no  will  but  that  of 
the  country."37  This  personal  choice  of  impersonal  ends  or 
loyalty  "reverberating  all  through  you,  stirring  you  to  your 

27  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  p.  396  f.  28.  Ibid.  p.  374.  See  also  "The  Sources  of 

Religious    Insight"   p.    200. 

29   The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,   p.   394.      Italics  are  mine.      30.  Ibid  p.   24. 
31   The    Philosophy    of    Loyalty,    p.    25.      32.  Ibid.    p.    25.      33.    Ibid.    p.    31.     34. 

Ibid.   p.    32.      35.    Ibid.   p.    34.      36.  Ibid.  p.    35.     37.    Ibid.    p.    41.      See  also 

Sources  of  Religious  Insisght,   p.    201. 

One   may   note   here   the   change   in   phraseology    (if   not   iu  meaning)    from   the 

earliest  book.  In  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy  (pp.  210-212)  much  is 
*  made  of  'impersonal'  aims  and  ideals.  Here  the  choice  of  one's  service  is  over  a 

'personal'  one.      (See  the  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,   pp.    18  f.,    20,    52,    79,   384)    p. 

20    'The    cause is    never    something    wholly    impersonal.     It    concerns    other 

men."     The  difference  seems  verbal.     The  'personal'  choice  to  be  impersonal  seems 

to  mo  to  be  a  self-contradiotion. 


4:2  Royce    and    /.ndiriduaf-ioti 

depths,  first  unifies  your  plan  of  life,  and  thereby  gives  you 
what  nothing  else  can  give, — yourself  as  lived  in  accordance 
with  a  plan,  your  consciousness  as  your  plan  interpreted  for 
you  through  your  ideal,  your  cause  expressed  as  your  personal 
purpose  in  living."3  This  loyalty  which  individuates  us  as 
selves  is  "the  will  to  manifest  the  eternal  in  and  through  the 
deeds  of  individual  selves."39  In  loyalty  to  a  cause  is  found 
that  which  not  only  individuates  the  life  of  any  person  in  fur- 
nishing him  with  a  task,  but  which  brings  him  to  full  moral 
self-consciousness.  My  consciousness  is  my  ideal  and  vice 
versa. 

.Xow  the  causes  of  men  will  vary.  Our  tasks  may  even 
seem  to  clash.  I  must  be  loyal  not  so  much  to  the  cause  of 
another  which  clashes  with  my  own  but  to  my  fellow's  spirit 
of  loyalty.  Thus  the  principle  that  individuates  men  may  be 
stated  in  its  most  general  form  as  "loyalty  to  loyalty".  *  Under 
the  leading  of  this  .spirit,  we  will  be  guided  towards  harmony 
and  peace  and  a  true  communal  life. 

Thus  Royce  has  sought  to  place,  metaphysically,,  the  moral 
life  of  man.  Individuals  temporally  construct  social  organiza- 
tions and  institutions,  because  eternally  they  are  social.  The 
'city  of  God'  is  being  let  down  out  of  Heaven.40  The  sense  of 
individual  separateness  is  the  negative  side  of  a  positive  com- 
munity of  nature.  An  isolated  individual  is  non-existent.  The 
gap,  which  thought  makes  at  times  between  individuals,  i? 
seen  as  only  real  for  thought.  Our  consciousness  is  social  and 
it  is  in  social  communion  that  the  uniqueness  of  self-identity 
is  attained.  In  defining  his  own  plan  and  purpose  within  the 
unity  of  the  communal  mind,  a  man  attains  what  degree  of  dis- 
tinctiveness  is  his.  The  basic  purpose  of  us  all  is  thus,  making 
our  purposes  definite,  to  cooperate  with  our  fellows  in  the 
pursuit  of  common  aims. 

IV. 

hi  the  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  the  principle  for  guidance 
in  moral  conduct,  is  the  principle  of  "loyalty  to  loyalty".  If 
the  individual  feels  that  the  direction  Ho  be  loyal  to  a  cause' 

38.    The   Philosophy   of    Loyalty   pp.    384.  39.   Ibid.    p.    377.     See    also    Sources   of 

Religious  Insight,   p.   206 . 
40.    See   Revelation    21/2. 


Royce   and   Individitation  4-1 

gives  little  more  counsel  than  a  rule  to  be  conscientious,  the 
interpretation  given  'loyalty  to  a  cause'  in  the  concluding  chap- 
ters of  the  book  and  in  "The  Problem  of  Christianity"  seems 
much  more  adequate.  The  ethical  rule  is  made  definitely  meta- 
physical. Loyalty  does  not  work  in  a  vacuum,  but  in  the  con- 
crete world.  Here  causes  are  found.  A  cause  is  the  appear- 
ance in  the  time-process  of  a  unity  of  life,  wider  or  larger  than 
the  individual  person..  These  causes,  if  not  fully  actual  in 
the  time-process,  are  being  realized  there.  So  then  "by  Loyalty 
is  meant  the  thorough-going  aind  loving  devotion  of  an  individ- 
ual to  a  community"41  and  such  a  view  presents  logically  the 
problem  "whether  'the  whole  universe  is  or  is  not,  in  some  sense, 
both  a  community  and  a  divine  being."42" 

»    *' 

The  idea  of  the  community,  suggested  by  the  problems  of 
human  social  life,  is  an  illustration  of  the  possible  solution  of 
the  problem  of  the  One  and  the  Many  and  hence  of  the  quarrels 
of  Monism  and  Pluralism.43  To  Royce,  in  this  latest  period, 
it  seems  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  one  calls  final  reality, 
the  Absolute  or  the  Divine  Community.44  "Man  the  commun- 
ity without  ceasing  to  be  genuinely  human,  may  also  prove  to 
be  divine  ......  Man  the  community  may  prove  to  be  God."40 

These  communities  are  true  individuals.     "A  crowd 

has  a  mind,  but  no  institutions,  no  organization,  no  coherent 
unity^  no  history,  no  traditions."46  Add  these  latter  features 
and  you  have  a  community,  for  "a  true  community  is  essentially 
a  product  of  a  time-process."47  This  is  illustrated  by  the 
'familiar  analogy'  from  individual  life.  "The  self  comes  down 
to  us  from  its  own  past.  It  needs  and  is  a  history."4  "My 
idea  of  jnyself  is  an  interpretation  of  my  past,  linked  with  arj 
interpretation  of  my  ho/pes  and  intentions  as  to  my  future."4 
If  I  extend  my  past,  my  life  tends  to  mei^e  with  the  lives  of 
my  kindred50  and  with  my  race.  If  I  extend  my  hopes  into  the 
future,  I  find  a  corresponding  Community  of  Hope.  The  ulti- 
mate unjty  of  all  would  be  the  Absolute.51 

The  analogy  of  the  finite,  with  his  power  of  extending  "his 
life  in  ideal  fashion,  so  as  to  regard  it  as  including  past  and 
future  events  which  lie  far  away  in  time,  and  which  he  does 
now  personally  remember,"52  is  used  to  illustrate  the  meaning 

41.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  vol.  I,  p.  XXXVII.  42.  Ibid,  vol  I,  p.  XXXVI. 
43.  Ibid.  vol.  II,  p.  17.44.  Ibid.  II,  p.  11,  17,  220,  296.  45.  Ibid.  I,  408  1. 
46.  Ibid.  II,  36  f.  47.  Ibid.  II,  37.  48.  Ibid.  II,  40.  49.  Ibid.  11,  42. 
50.  Ibid  II,  64.  51.  Ibid  II,  46  f.  The  Absolute  is  implied  in  the  unity  of 
the  two  men  in  the  canoe.  52.  Ibid.  vol.  II,  p.  60  f. 


-14  lioijcc    ((.i<l    1 1  id.  In  dual  (on 

of  the  t Community'.      It  is  a  genuine  unity  of  many,  a  social 
unity  with  a  history  and  with  ideals  for  the  future.. 

"Motives  which  are  as  familiar  as  they  are  hard  to  analyse 
have  convinced  us  all,  before  we  begin  to  philosophise,  that  our 
human  world  contains  a  variety  of  individually  distinct  minds 
or  selves,  and  that  some,  for  us  decisively  authoritative,  prin- 
ciple of  individuation  keeps  these  selves  apart."53  Here  is 
'stubborn  pluralism'.  It  points  to  the  "diversity  and  the  ^ep- 
arateness  of  our  streams  of  immediate  feeling"54  or  notes  "that 
our  trains  of  conscious  thought  and  purpose  are  mutually  in- 
accessible through  any  mode  of  direct  intuition55  or  refers  to 
"our  deeds".  Are  we  not  ultimately  separate?  Yet  "primi- 
tive man  is  not  an  individualist"56  even  though  he  gains  dis- 
tinctiveness  as  he  emerges  from  the  primitive. 

Monism  would  indicate  a  more  fundamental  unity  in  that 
"social  cooperation  unquestionably  brings  into  existence  lan- 
guages, customs,  religions."57  The  facts  of  social  and  state  life 
indicate  that  "large  and  small  bodies  of  men  can  come  to-  act 
as  if  one  common  intelligence  and  one  common  will  were 
using  the  individuals  as  its  almost  helpless  instruments."58  In 
actual  social  life  "the  close  shut-in  streams  of  consciousness  ap- 
pear as  if  they  had  lost  their  banks  altogether."59  The  'Com- 
munity', as  not  only  the  larger  inclusive  present,  but  as  also" 
the  great  past  and  the  future,  holds  within  itself  the  individuals 
in  spite  of  or  through  their  separatenesss.  So  the  Divine  Com- 
munity is  that  invisible  world  which  holds  us  all. 

The  problem  of  individuation  is  not  then  to  note  the  points 
of  separation  as  if  the  ^individual  could  be  defined  nega- 
tively by  what  he  excluded  or  was  not.  "My  life  means  noth- 
ing, either  theoretically  or  practically,  unless  I  am  a  member 
of  a  community.  I  win  no  success  worth  having  unless  it  is 
also  the  success  of  the  community  to  which  I  essentially  and  by 
virtue  of  my  real  relations  to  die  whole  universe  belong.  My 
deeds  are  not  done  at  all,  unless  they  are  indeed  done  for  all  time 
and  are  irrevocable."60  The  community  gives  this  historical 
fixity  and  continuity.  The  lesser  unites  or  communities  are  all 
fixed  in  the  supreme  unity  or  community.  Here  the  'credit 
values'  of  postulates  and  hypotheses  have  their  'redeemers'  "laid 

53.    Ibid,  vol  II,  p.   13.      54.  Ibid.   vol.    II,  20  f.      55.   Ibid,  vol.   II,   23  f. 
56.   Ibid.  vol.   II,  25.      57.     Ibid.   vol.   II,  p.    26.      58.   Ibid,  vol.  II,  p.    27  f. 

59.  Ibid.   vol.  II,   28. 

60.  The   Problem   of   Christianity,    II.    313. 


Royce   and   Individuation  45 

up  in  a  realm  where  our  experiences  past,  present,  future,  arc 
the  objects  of  a  conspectus  that  is  not  merely  temporal  and 
transient"61  for  "the  temporal  world  in  its  wholeness,  constitutes 
in  itself  an  infinitely  complex  Sign.  This  sign  is,  as  a  whole, 
interpreted  to  an  experience  which  itself  includes  a  synoptic 
survey  of  the  whole  of  time."62 

If  now  I  am,  more  or  less  potentially,  a  member  of  a  com- 
munity how  am  I  individuated  as  such  a  member?  I  am  a 
self  in  being  "a  life  whose  unity  and  connectedness  depc-rds 
upon  some  sort  of  interpretations  of  plans,  of  memories,  of 
hopes  and  of  deeds."63  "The  word  'interpretation7  is  a  conven- 
ient name  for  a  process  which  at  least  aims  to  be  cognitive."64 
"There  is  no  direct  intuition  or  perception  of  the  self"65  but 
"one  discovers  one's  own  mind  through  a  process  of  inference 
analogous  to  the  very  modes  of  inference  which  guide  us  in  a 
social  effort  to  interpret  our  neighbour's  minds."6  Even  in  my 
moments  of  reflection  I  i;m  social  for  "reflection  involves  an 
interior  conversation."67  "Through  the  present  self,  the  past  is 
so  interpreted  that  its  counsel  is  conveyed  to  the  future  self.''08 
Thus  in  my  very  cognition  1  show  my  social  nature.  I  am  a 
community,  an  image  of  the  whole.  This  constitutes  my  in- 
dividuation.  In  loyalty  I  serve  the  ultimate  cause  and  become 
in  myself  an  interpreter.  Just  as  in  the  earliest  periods  bring 
ing  the  Absolute  to  the  facts,  each  finite  self  turns  out  to  be, 
when  fully  viewed,  the  Absolute.  So  here  the  Community 
(though  viewed  also  as  less  definitely  a  unit)  is  brought  to  the 
facts  and  each  individual,  as  seen  fully,  is  a  community.69 

"Loyalty  to  a  community  of  interpretation  enters  into  all 
the  other  forms  of  true  loyalty.  i\To  one  who  loves  mankind 
can  find  a  worthier  and  more  significant  way  to  express  his  love 
than  by  increasing  and  expressing  among  men  the  Will  to  In- 
terpret."70 

The  loyalty  to  a  cause  which  is  thus  posited  as  the  principle 
of  individuation,  if  deepened  from  an  ethical  to  a  metaphysical 
reference,  means  a  Loyalty  to  the  Beloved  Community.  Each 

61.  The   Philosophy   of   Loyalty,    p.    337. 
C2.   The  Problem  of  Christianity,    II.    286 

63.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,   II,  p.   111.     64.  Ibid.  II,   129.      65.    Ibid.  II,   138. 
66.  Ibid.  II,    138  f.      67.   Ibid.  II,    138.      68.  Ibid.  II,    144. 

69.  To  view  one's  cognition  as  triadic  and  thus  social  and  hence  to  ground  the  notion 
of  man's  social  natufe  in  this  is  to  me  an  analogy  but  no  more. 

70.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,   11,218.     71.  Ibid,   II,   p.   215.      See  also  the  Philo- 
sophy  Oi   Loyalty,   p.    172. 


46  Royce   and  Individuabion 

one  is  then  "ideally  aiming  at  an  ideal  event, — the  spiritual 
unity  of  our  community"71  and  in  so  doing  becomes  a  significant 
individual. 

The  loyal  individual  in  possessing  the  'Will  to  Interpret* 
is  an  interpreter.  That  which  viewed  practically  is  loyalty, 
viewed  cognitively  is  interpretation. 


Royce   and   Individu&tion  47 

•V 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Critical 
L 

In  this  period,  the  principle  of  individuation,  whether  'loy- 
alty to  a  cause',  'loyalty  to  loyalty'  or  'the  will  to  interpret', 
is  after  all  a  merely  formal  conception.  We  are  left  with  no 
canon  of  preference  which  will  enable  us  to  choose  between 
competing  causes  each  of  which  might  by  itself  be  regarded  as 
good.  Indeed  we  do  not  seem  to  be  in  the  sphere  of  concrete 
situations  where  causes  are  real.  'Loyalty  to  loyalty'  is  "a 
noble  virtue  but  unless  we  read  into  it  all  our  virtues  and  our 
entire  traditional  morality,  it  remains  too  general  and  empty  to 
be  of  any  great  theoretical  and  practical  value."1 

To  such  a  possible  objection  Royce  has  made  the  following- 
answer.  If  our  uncertainty  is  the  choosing  between  causes  to 
both  of  which  one  should  be  loyal,  then  the  deepened  conception 
of  loyalty  is  to  guide  us.  This  is  "loyalty  to  loyalty".  *  We 
are  to  be  loyal  to  loyalty  in  order  to  do  what  we  can  to  produce 
a  maximum  of  devoted  service  of  causes,  a  maximum  of  fidelity, 
and  of  selves  that  choose  and  serve  fitting  objects  of  loyalty. 
But  if  I  use  the  word  'fitting'  I  assume  the  distinction  between 
good  and  bad  causes.  This  is  what  a  fundamental  principle 
of  morality  should  give.  And  so  we  are  left  still  without  any 
calculus  of  loyalties  and  apart  from  such  calculus  the  distinc- 
tion between  good  and  evil  is  assumed  simply  from  the  views 
of  common  sense  and  that  without  any  acknowledgment.  Grant- 
ed we  are  to  be  loyal  and  to  promote  loyalty.  It  is  not  loyalty 
that  makes  a  causev$ood  or  bad.  I  want  guidance  in  objective 
situations,  not  a  mere  maxim  to  be  conscientious.. 

Without  a  doubt  this  "fixed  principle  of  duty"  is  necessary 
in  all  morality.  But  the  morality  which  is  constituted  by  pure 


1.  P.  Thilly.  Review  of  "The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty'1  in  The  Philosophical  Reviev 
for  1908,  p.  541  f.  He  holds  that  Royce  deduces  from  the  concept  of  loyalty 
exactly  what  he  has  put  in  and  so  has  not  got  to  the  roots  of  human  conduct. 
Loyalty  is  a  general  label  for  all  the  virtues  and  is  not  shown  to  be  a  principle 
(*ee  Tho  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  pp.  129  f.,  IHf)). 


48  Koyce    and   Indiridnation 

Loyalty  is  a  morality  that  is  yet  in  the  stage  of  intention  or 
theory.  The  loyalty  of  the  official2  to  his  conscience  takes  pre- 
cedence over  his  loyalty  to  his  chief.  Here  was  a  Concrete  or 
objective  situation  with  certain  values  involved  already.  Lov- 
alty  said  only,  'stick  to  your  highest  value/  It  did  not  decide 
which.  Gen.  R.  E.  Lee  had  to  choose  between  his  loyalty  to 
state  rights  and  to  the  Fnion.  The  advice  of  'loyalty'  is3- 
study  the  whole  situation  and  when  choosing — choose  with  de- 
cision and,  having  placed  one's  hand  to  the  plow,  turn  not  back 
When  deciding  between  two  good  causes,  the  principle  of  loyalty 
"commands  simply  but  imperatively  that  since  I  must  serve, 
and  since,  at  this  critical  moment,  my  only  service  must  take 
the  form  of  a  choice  between  loyalties,  I  shall  choose,  even  in 
my  ignorance,  what  form  my  service  is  henceforth  to  take."4 
The  principle  of  choice  is — choose !  Having  chosen  I  must  not 
look  back  nor  regret.  "Decide,  knowingly  if  you  can,  ignorant- 
ly  if  you  must,  but  in  any  case  decide  and  have  no  fear."5  And 
this  is  the  guidance  where  loyalties  conflict!  "Indecision 
would  of  itself  constitute  a  sort  of  .decision."  And  it  is  better 
to  act  for  one  of  the  causes  than  to  do  nothing.  Here  we  have 
no  real  dealing  with  a  situation  as  objective.  It  is  rather  the 
subjective.  Where  further  objective  information  is  what  is 
needed,  we  have  the  subjective  maxim — Choose.6 

In  ethics  we  are  seeking  for  some  absolute  rule  or,  if  not 
absolute,  something  at  least  that  comes  to  us  with  a  note  of 
authority.  We  find  in  practice  that  all  particular  rules  are 
tentative,  except  the  rule — 'observe  rule'.  This  is  the  "law 
that  there  shall  be  law"  (Palmer).  Loyalty  to  loyalty  is  of 
this  absolute,  subjective7  type.  It  is  a  fixed  principle  of  duty 
rather  than  a  guide  in  particular  cases.  The  real  criterion  be- 
hind loyalty — the  one  involved  not  merely  theoretically  in  the 
subject  but  in  the  object  also  in  all  truly  objective  situations — 
the  social  unity,  the  kingdom  of  ends,  a  union  of  selves  in- 
spired by  social  ideals. 

While  this  is  so  it  is  not  a  useless  emphasis  which  we  have- 
here  on  loyalty.  It  is  an  absolute  rule  even  if  its  absolutism 
does  not  seem  to  help  much  in  actual  situations.  If  we  are 
object-minded  and  each  actual  situation  in  which  we  find  our- 
selves is  a  subject-object  situation,  it  is  not  altogether  useless 


2.     The    Philosophy    of    Loyalty,    pp.     135-137.     3.  Ibid,    pp    183-193.     4.    Ibid,    p 
189.5.    Ibid.    p.    189. 


Royce    and  Indict  dilation  49 

to  see  what  the  subject  side  implies.  It  is  an  ' anticipation  of 
attainment'  to  view  in  vision  the  self  as  in  all  loyal  and  harmon- 
ious relation  with  his  fellows.  It  will  nerve  his  actual  deeds 
to  justice  and  equity  to  have  this  good  will  in  intention.  In 
this  sense  it  is  a  guiding  ideal,  however  blind8  it  is  in  the  details 
of  accomplishment.  But  is  is  subjective  and  hence  abstract 
though  it  "is  never  a  merely  pious  wish".9  Other  ethical  theor- 
ies seek  some  objective  end,  such  as  happiness,  well-being,  self- 
realization,  at  least  some  concrete10  ideal  for  action. 

This  'retreat  into  the  self  has^a  peculiar  value  from  Royce's 
point  of  view.  If  loyalty  is  a  formal  principle,  the  "form"  is 
significant.  The  subject  is  social  in  his  true  or  full  nature. 
To  recognize  always  that  one's  good, — whatever  it  may  bo, — 
r  must  be  one  which  shall  make  or  keep  one  a  true  member  of  the 
community,  is  to  keep  in  mind  a  'formal'  idea  which  will  have 
its  effect  socially.  One  is  committed  to  the  cause  of  'good  will 
'among  men'.  But  this  loyalty,  seen  thus  as  ideal,  is  rather  the 
primal  individuation,  the  potential,  than  the  actual  becoming 
of  a  personality.  This  is  wrought  out  in  the  objective  situa-. 
tions  of  life.  We  are  to  face  this  process  with  the  recognition 
that  we  are  'members  one  of  another'.  This  is  to  be  loyal, 
even  to  'be  loyal  to  loyalty.'  It  is  the  assertion  of  the  auton- 
omy of  a  social  being.  In  any  possible  action  I  will  be  free. 
The  choice  is  to  be  my  own.  It  must  be  a  unforced11  loyalty 
to  a  cause  that  fascinates  me.  This  cause  I  view  beforehand 
as  of  necessity  one  of  good  will  to  all.  But  it  is  a  prophecy  of 
individuation  rather  than  its  attainment. 


IT. 


Against  loyalty  as  elaborated  there  seems  a  further  criticism. 
It  is  essentially  altruistic.  Royce  attacks  the  individualism  of 
Nietzsche12  whose  'will  to  power'  he  characterizes  as  "power 
idealized  through  its  social  efficacy,  and  conceived  in  terms  of 
some  more  or  less  vague  dream  of  a  completely  perfected 
and  ideal,  but  certainly  social,  individual  man."  Despite  this 
appreciative  interpretation,  Royce  goes  011  to  show  the  objection* 
to  "defeing  your  personal  good  in  terms  merely  of  power." J3 
the  attainment  of  power  is  so  uncertain,  the  lust  for  it  becomes 


It  would   seem  also   that   experimentally  one   should  be  prepared  to  look  back  aud 
make    chnnsrcs    if    experience    should    suggest    it. 


50  lloyce   and  Individual  ion 

insatiable,  and  it  means  increasing  opportunity  for  conflict. 
But  this  seems  to  be  giving  'power J  a  sort  of  animal  or  brute 
force  meaning.  If  we  read  power  in  terms  of  mechanical  skill, 
the  magic  of  the  orator,  the  art  of  the  teacher,  we  see  power  in 
another  form  than  the  one  akin  to  violence..  Even  in  the  'loy- 
aty  to  loyalty'  life,  since  I  must  act,  I  will  be  in  danger  of  con- 
flict. Koyce  challenges  the  individualist  to  set  about  the  task. 
He  would  have  him  quit  his  'preliminary  gesticulations'  "and 
act.  It  seems  to  lloyce  an  ideal  with  no  content  and  surely  if 
it  means  an  exalting  of  the  empty  claim  to  self -hood  over  against 
the  whole  world  of  possible  deeds  and  achievements,  it  is  con- 
ten  tless.  But  have  we"  not  the  same  position  if  one  gesticulates  or 
talks  of  devotion-  to  causes,  and  loyalty  to-  loyalty  ?  One  inigKt 
well  say — Begin  the  life  of  loyalty  or  find  the  cause.  In 
Roycc's  position  there  seems  the  exaltation  of  the  'cause'. 
The  'will  to  power'  stirs  up  trouble  with  others.  This  is  an 
objection  to.  it.'  Loyalty  to  a  cause  will  avoid  this.  Is  it  by 
the  absence  of  self  assertion?  Have  I  the  right  in  such  a 
scheme  to  trust  my  own  judgment  about  'causes'?  If  so  how 
can  I  convince  one  who  has  a  rival  cause  that  I  am  impartial, 
unbiased,  and  impersonal  ?  Or  if  1  avoid  all  setting  up  of  my 
own  judgment  and  accept  that  of  another,  am  I  not  in  danger 
of  being  classed  as  a  mere  partisan  of  another  ?  Ill  either 
event,  I  meet  with  trouble.  It  is  not  the  'will  to  power'  alone 
that  has  warfare  in  its  career. 

Prof  Eoyce's  statements  make  much  of  such  terms  as  'fidel- 
ity', 'devotion',  'self-surrender'.  He  feels  the  "essentially  irre- 
sistible forces  of  the  whole  universe"14  quoting  Spinoza's  "The 
power  of  man  is-  infinitely  surpassed  by  the;  power  of  external 
things."  It  seems  an  attitude  of  defence,  rather  than  one  of 
attack.  The  great  inventions  or  creations  are  not  won  through 
a  direct  command  of  natur.e's  laws.  It  is  rather  that  know- 
ledge of  and  obedience  to  nature's  laws  give  powers  of  achieve- 
ment not  otherwise  possessed.  "Our  creativity  in  any  field 


1.      See  W.   E.   Hocking  "The   Meaning  of  God   in  Hainan   Experience"  p.    195   ff.    on 

the   irrelevant  universal   and  its   value. 
8.      The   Philosophy   of    Loyalty,   p.    186.      9.   Ibid.    pp.    185,    188. 

10.  See  W.   R.   Sorloy  in  the  Hibbert  Joufnal,  vol.  VII.,   No.  I,   in  a  review  of  VTha 
Philosophy  of  Loyalty"  in  which  ho  holds  that  this  principle  of  loyalty  is  a  merely 

formal   one. 

11.  See   The   Philosophy   of   Loyalty,    pp.    120,    131.      12.   Ibid.   pp.    4,    85,    98,    381, 
382.     The  Problem  of  Christianity,    I,   p.    155. 

13.   "The   Philosophy  of   Loyalty"    pp.    87-89.      14.  .Ibid.   p.    88.  ,j 

15.  W.    E.    Hocking      'The   Meaning  of  God  in  Human   Experience"   p.   XVII. 
16.  The  Philosophy  of  Loyally,  p.  03. 


Itoyce    and  Individual  ion  51 

follows  faithfully  the  character  of  our  passivity  in  that  same 
field,  and  varies  with  it  not  inversely  but  directly."15  Burbank 
has  exercised  something  of  this  power  to  create.  The  Nietz- 
schean  'will  to  be  mighty'  may  seem  an  "empty  proclaiming 
of  a  moral  sovereignty  over  your  life'7,16  but  the  emphasis  on 
'devotion'  to  causes  seems  to  denature  one  on  the  other  side. 
Even  though  there  be  the  unforced  and  personal  choice  of  a 
'cause'  that  fascinates  me,  loyalty  will  tend  to  a  minimum  since 
it  lacks  the  urge  of  the  truly  or  fully  personal..  It  will  lack 
the  full  initiative  which  I  submit  cannot- exist  where  one  has 
'surrendered'  self.  We  are  not  held  to  a  choice  between  a 
selfish17  and  an  altruistic  life.  One  ca'nnot  unself  oneself. 
The  higher  self/  the  fully  personal,  has  its  legitimate18  right 
to  the  sense  of  happiness  and  victory.  Because  the  ruthless 
violent  self  demands  such  satisfaction,  the  demand  in  itself  is 
not  thereby  wrong. 

III. 

1      •< 

Loyalty  has  been  criticised  as  abstractly  formal  or  subjec- 
tive. It  is  submitted  further  that  Interpretation-,  as  a  cogni- 
tive process,  is  not  primary.  It  is  concerned  with  predicate?, 
with  the  'what'  of  things,  and  hence  it  has  no  originating  power" 
over  existential  propositions.  As  every  interpretation,  includ- 
ing a  theoretical  first  one,  presumes  the  existence  of  the  minds 
addressed  by  the  interpreter,  the  belief  in  the  existence  of  minds 
beyond  my  present  self  cannot  be  a  product  of  interpretation. 

It  would  seem  then  that  in  Interpretation,  as  cognitive,  we 
have  a  stage  or  partial  phase  only  of  a  developed  individual 
life.  It  may  reinforce  the  more  primitive  individuatioii 
but  has  not  caused  it.  This  more  primitive  individuation  is 
that  which  has  not  only  separated  me  as  a  discrete  individual 
but  has  supplied  that  simpler  and  more  direct  or  immediate 
knowledge  of  other  mind,  which  the  interpretative  process  takes 
up  and  elaborates.  Interpretation,  as  cognitive,  is  the  name 
for  a  certain  stage  or  formati6n  of  the  individuating  process. 

In  the  first  two  periods,  Royce  holds  that  in  finite  thought, 
ideally  viewed,  (not  as  concretely  embodied)  we  have  a  true 


17.  In   Aristotle's   Ethics   Book   IX,    Ch.    VIII.,    this   point   is   discussed,    to    distinguish 
two   kinds    of    self-love.      To    Aristotle    the    highest    a   man   can    seek    is    self-love   of 
The  higher   type.     In   this   it   seems   to   me   Aristotle   is  nearer"  the  truth   than   is 
•         Rovcc. 


52  Royce    and   Indlvidaation 

unity  in  variety19  In  interpretation  we  have  the  true  triad. 
Is  it  not  simply,  as  before,  ideally  viewed?  Is  not  its  attempt- 
ed concrete  embodiment  forever  incomplete  ?  As  with  the  finite 
thinker  in  the  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  Interpretation 
is  of  the  nature  of  reflection  on  or  after  the  event.  The  fact 
of  individuality  already  is,  when  interpretation20,  takes  up  its 
work. 

It  is  submitted  further  that  interpretation  as  cognitive,  is, 
as  in  the  case  of  'thought'  in  the  first'  period,  not  a  basis  upon 
which  to  found  a  doctrine  of  the  concrete  Avorld  as  an  Inter- 
pretation. Cognition  knows  nothing  of  a  concrete  union..  It 
is  a  knowledge  of  reality.  To  capitalize  the  word  and  speak 
of  it  as  the  concrete  world  is  a  conceptual  construction.  In- 
terpretation deals  with  the  "what"  of  things. 

IV. 

In  this  later  period  we  find  still  the  presence  of  the  a 
lutism  which  means  a  completed  experience/  It  is  held 
•  vH  (though  not  proved)  to  be  synonymous  with  'The  Divine  Com- 
^  munity'.  The  Absolute  is  an  "experience  which  itself  includes 
a  synoptic  survey  of  the  whole  of  time."21  In  developing,  from 
finite  individuality  the  idea  of  a  community ,  reference  is  made 
to  "the  power  of  an  individual  self  to  extend  his  life,  in  ideal 
fashion,  so  as  to  regard  it  as  including  past  and  future.  Vhich 
lie  far  away  in  time  and  which  lie  does  not  now  personally  re- 
member"'2'*  We  are  told  "the  genuine  person  lives  in  the  far 
off  past  and  future  as  well  as  in  the  present."23  The  absolute 
or  the  Divine  Community  including  all  time,  past,  present  and 
future,  is  held  to  be  the  logical  implication. 


18.  This  objection  to  Royae  is  dealt  with  more  fully  in  Part  II. 

19.  See  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,    p.   378,   and  The  'World  and  the  Indi- 
vidual  I,    p.    490   f. 

20.  L.   P.   Jacks    (in  The  Hibbert   Journal,   vol.   XII,    No.   I)    in  reviewing   "The   Pro: 
blom   of    Christianity"    says    that    'interpretation',    as    described    by    Royce,    is    ade- 
quate of  "an  ex  post  facto  description  of  what  has  taken  place  when,   say,  a  given 
scientific    discovery    has   been    accomplished"    but   not    "an    adequate   ruidering    from 
the   inside   of   what   is   taking  place   while    the   mind   of    the  would-be    discovers    is 
engaged    in    his    search."      "Royce    is    surely    anticipating    when    he    puts    'interpre- 
tation'  into   the  cognitive   process   itself.      Interpretation   is   what   the   process   lacks, 
not  what  it  possesses:   and  it  is  precisely  as  still  lacking  the  interpretation  sought, 
and   is   still   looking  for   it,    that   knowing,    as   distinct   frora   knowledge,    is  a    cogni- 
tive  function   at   all.      The   particular  functioning   in   question   is   all   over   when   the 
mediating   idea   appears."      There   is  a   distinction   between   discovering   and   the   dis- 
covery.     Interpretation    refers    rather    to    the    results    in    knowledge    than    to    tho 
'process  in  being'  which  is  'knowing'. 

21.  Tho  Problem  of  Christianity,   p.   286.      22.   Ibid.   p.    60   f.    (Italics   are  mine).    2?,. 
TViifl .    p.     67. 


Royce   and   Individuation  50 

In  the  second  period  this  time-transcendence  has  been  illus- 
trated by  the  analogy  from  the  finite  where  "in  our  conscious- 
ness, the  now  of  experience  does  mean  just  such  an  actual, 
brief  but  still  finite,  interval  or  period  of  time,  within  which 
and  during  which  events  succeed  one  after  another."24  This  is 
a  'time-span',  and  "an  eternal  consciousness  is  definable  as  onn 
for  which  all  the  facts  of  the  whole  time  stream,  just  so  far  as 
time  is  a  final  form  of  consciousness,  have  the  same  type  of  unity 
that  your  present  momentary  consciousness,  even  now  within  its 
little  span,  surveys,"25  The  Infinite  has  an  all-inclusive  time- 
span. 

In  this  third  period,  "the  time-order,  in  its  sense  and  inter- 
connection, is  known  to  us  through  interpretation,  and  is  neither 
a  conceptual  nor  yet  a  perceptual  order."26  "Time,  for  in- 
stance, expresses  a  system  of  essentially  social  relations.  The 
present  interprets  the  past  to  the  future"27  and  "this  whole  time- 
process28  is  in  some  fashion  spanned  by  one  insight  which  sur- 
veys the  unity  of  its  meaning Its  value  is  the  one  em- 
pirically known  to  us  at  any  one  moment  when  we  clearly  cor.- 
trast  two  of  our  own  ideas  and  find  their  mediator."29  Here 
we  no  longer  have  a  time-span,  but  yet  the  Interpretation  is 
not  timeless.  Yet  as  quoted  in  the  previous  paragraph,  this 
experience  is  a  "synoptic  survey".  It  is  submitted  that  there 
are  two. conceptions  of  time  given  here.  One  is  the  time-span,  the 
other  an  interpretation. 

"We  have  then  the  doctrine  of  a  iotum  simul,  a  closed  or 
finished  world.  This  persists  through  all  periods  and  if  held 
'too  strictly,  leaves  no  room  for  free  individuals  unless  it  be  in 
a  sort  of  passive  reflection  or  interpretation  of  the  meaning  of 
life.  There  is  no  room  for  will  in  action. 

V. 

If,  neglecting  the  logic  of  a  'finished  universe',  we  consider 
the  nature  and  function" of  the  higher  or  super-personal  unities, 
much  will  turn  on  whether  they  are  actual  in  any  positive  form 


24.   The  World   and   the  Individual,   I,    p.    421.    25.   Ibid.    I,    425. 
26.   The  Problem   of  Christianity,    II,    155.      27.   Ibid.   II,    280. 

28.  Royce  notes  that  Bergson   "rightly  asserts   that  the  world  of  any  present  moment 
of  time  is   a  summary  of  the  results  of  all  past  experience."     It   is  an  interpre- 
tation.    The    whole    interprets    its    past    in    the    present    to    the    future.     But    this 
future   is   not   included.     It   is   an   open   door,    and   the   source   of   endless   novelties. 
(See   Creative   Evolution,    p.    340.)      To   posit   a    synoptic    survey   of   the   whole   of 
time  is  to  put  past  and  future  on  a  par  in  the  Absolute  and  to  make  time  unreal. 
29.    The   Problem   of    Christianity,    II,    271.       (Italics   are   mine). 


5-i    .  Itoyce    and    la  dividual  ion 

in  the  world.  They  are  defined  as  true  individuals. 
highly  organized  community  is  as  truly  a  human  being  as  we 
are  individually  human.  Only  a  community  is  not  what  wo 
usually  call  a  human  being ;  because  it  has  no  one  separate  and 
internally  well-knit  organism  of  its  own ;  and  because  its  mind, 
if  you  attribute  to  it  any  one  mind,  is  therefore  not  manifested 
through  the  expressive  movements  of  [such  a  separate  human 
organism."30  Now  if  this  means  an  actual  community — a  true 
individual — having,  a  mind  and  a  will,  it  is  but  logic  to  inter- 
pret such  as  giving  it  supreme  and,  if  need  be,  coercive  power31 
over  the  individual  members  of  the  community.  The  actual 
community  is  however  a  very  plastic  affair.  Only  where  wo 
have  an  autocracy  does  it  really  act  as  a  whole  and  here  the  one 
individual  mind  overrides  all  other  minds.  In  a  democracy 
it  is  different,  the  common  will  is  not  actual  but  ideal.  We 
have  rather  a  collective  will.  "The  State  is  a  reality  which  is 
what  it  is  by  dint  of  the  combined  resolves  of  many  human 
wills,  through  time;  we  individuals  find  the  state  as  something 
apparently  finished,  standing  there  as  something  to  be  accept- 
ed; but  at  no  time  does  the  existence  of  this  object  become  so 
independent  that  it  can  continue  to  hold  its  reality  apart  from 
the  good  will  which  from  moment  to  moment  recreates  it."1' 
The  state,  regarded  thus,  will  not  have  that  over-individuality 
which  will  mean  supreme  power.33  While  Eoyce  has  written 
at  times  as  if  the  higher  unities  are  true  individuals,  he  has  not 
.dropped  the  emphasis  found  in  his  earlier  book?  that  the  will 
of  such  community  is  reached  through  individual  insight  and 
choice.  We  have  an  oscillation  between  the  two  views. 

I  would  submit  that  in  speaking  of  "two  levels  of  human 
life  the  level  of  the  individual  and  the  level  of  the  commun- 
ity,"34 Eoyce  leaves  the  door  open  to  such  literalizing  of  this 
over-individuality  as  can  mean  coercion  of  the  individual  mem- 
bers and  hence  their  enslavement.  But  if  it  is  mediated  through 
the  consciousness  of  individuals  we  have  in  place  of  the  'level 


30.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  I,  p.   166.     Italics  arc  mine  as  marking  a  significant 
reservation.     Again   we  have   an   unmediated   contrast. 

31.  Notice  has  already  been  taken  of  Prof.  Dewey's  connection  of  Germany's  war  spirit 
with  the  philosophies  of  Hegel  and  Kant. 

32.  W.   E.  Hocking,   The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,   pp.   140  f. 

33.  It  is  significant  that  in  a  democracy  like  Great  Britain,   conscription,   in   the  pre- 
sent war,   was  not  used  until  it  was  evident  that  the  bare  existence  of  that  free* 
dom  would  depend  on  itsj^emporary  violation. 

34.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,   II,   57.     See  also  I,    165  ff. 


Royce   and   Iiidiuiduation  55 

of  the  community'  what  might  be  called  the  'fully  personal/ 
This  is  the  "social  level  of  hitman  individuality.  The  efforts 
to  embody  this  in  society  and  in  the  state  are  ever  tentative. 
Without  a  doubt  the  experience  of  the  past  is  the  heritage  of 
each  new  individual.  The  organization  of  society  provides 
for  this  continuity  of  life.  But  the  new  breaks  in  to  life 
through  the  individual.  God  does  not  speak  to  the  crowd  or 
to  the  community  as  such.  In  some  brain35  his  message  comes 
to  explicit  consciousness.  Life  for  the  individual  must  at  its 
best  be  fully  personal.  His  decisions  must  ever  be  his  own. 


VI. 


A  further  contention  concerning  interpretation  is  this.  As 
interpretation  in  the  finite  it  is  a  cognitive  process.  This  im- 
plies a  growing  knowledge  of  reality,  but  not  such  widening  of 
experience  as  concrete  or  direct  and  immediate  as  to  point  logi- 
cally to  a  concrete  Interpretation.  The  capitalizing  of  the 
word  must  not  hide  this  significant  difference. 

"In  the  concrete,  then,  the  universe  is  a  community  of  in- 
terpretation whose  life  comprises  a'nd  unifies  all  the  social  com- 
munities which,  for  any  reason,  we  know  to  be  real  in  the  em- 
pirical world  which  our  social  and  our  historical  sciences 
study."36  This  "single  Community  of  Interpretation"37  marks 
a  union  of  a  cognitive  process  with  the  objects  such  as  we  do 
'not  have  in  the  finite.  Further  we  do  not  have  that  which 
shows  any  tendency  towards  such  union.  We  have  that  only 
which'  can  give  by  direct  contrast  this  union.  And  contrast 
does  not  carry  with  it  necessarily  the  predicate  of  existence. 

One  would  say  that  Royce  would  have  come  much  nearer  the 
mark  logically  had  he  reached  the  view  of  a  community  of  In- 
terpreters. This  'Community  of  Interpretation'  is  the  new  title 
for  the  Absolute.  I  am  unable  to  see  that  Royce  has  found 
in  the  facts  of  the  social  as  logically  implicated  this  Community 
of  Interpretation.  This  Community  in  its  members  possesses 


to.  Lowell  in  his  poem  "on  reading  Burns  in  a  workman's  car.'' 
"All    thoughts    that   mould    the   age,    begin 
"Deep  down  within   the  primitive   soul, 
"And   from   the   many   slowly   upward   win 
"To    one    who    grasps  -fhe    whole. 
"In  his   wide   brain   the   feeling  deep 
"That   struggled   on   the   many's   tongue 
"Swells    to    a   tide   of    thought"    etc. 


56  Royce    and    Lndl  old  nation 

a  continually  wider  knowledge  (or  interpretation)  of  reality. 
It  has  not  a  direct  and  immediate  and  ever  widening  experience 
of  reality.  The  past  is  carried  in  symbolic  or  other  memory 
form.  The  future  is  not  yet.  Nothing  indicates  an  'Interpre- 
tation' with  'synoptic  survey'.  As  with  'Thought'  and  'Will', 
we  have  here  in  the  case  of  'Interpretation7  something  gained 
not  by  logic,  but  by  a  conceptual  contrast. 

We  have  two  views  of  an  ultimate  somewhat  externally 
run  together  here:  the  Divine  Community  in  a  real  time-order, 
carrying  with  it  its  past  in  a  true  interpretation  to  the  present 
facing  of  the  future  and  an  Absolute,  "viewing  the  whole  time- 
process  by  a  single  synopsis"38  and  thus  inclusive  of  the  future. 
The  first  gives  a  teleology  where  the  process  is  real  and  signifi- 
cant. The  latter  makes  the  process  in  time  a  mere  means  to 
the  significant  end.  The  reality  which  is  eternally  present  is 
essentially  static.  The  former  gives  to  time  its  true  reality. 
The  latter,  in  including  the  future,  renders  time  meaningless 
to  us. 


36.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  II,  p.  272.     37.  Ibid.  II,   272.     38.  Ibid  II,   271. 


Royce    aiid    Indiciduation  ;Y7 

CHAPTER  VI  IT. 

Summary  on  the  Principle  of  Individuation. 
I. 

In  the  first  period  the  distinctive  ness  of  the  human  individual 
is  found  in  'Reflection' .  The  world  is  eternally  complete. 
Hence  the  thought  of  the  finite  individual  must  be  an  idea  only. 
It  ca<n  be  valid,  but  not  creative  or  constitutive.  We  have  in 
Reflection  but  a  partial  view  of  individuation,  since  reflection  is 
on  what  is  already  given  or  existent.71  Individuality  in  some  sense 
is  already  present,  but  in  or  through  reflection  it  attains  a  higher 
level. 

II. 

i 

In  the  second  period  the  distinctiveness  of  the  human  individual 
is  held  to  be  the  work  of  will  or  purpose.  The  world  is  a  'com- 

^^ --"••""-•      •-'          '"••-" --"* ~~-"Al  •! 

pleted  experience'.  Will  in  the  finite  as  achievement,  or  embodi- 
ment, finds  'no  place  in  such  a  world.  The  finite  is  shut  up  to  the 
possibilities  of  clarifying  in  idea  his  purpose  or  to  defining  his 
will.  In  so  far  as  this  remains  untried,  unexpressed  or  unfulfill- 
ed, such  will  or  purpose  seems  synonymous  with  clarity  of  thought. 
If  not  exactly  synonymous  with  thought,  it  is  inclusive  of  other  ele- 
ments such  as  instincts  and  necessary  desires,  which  however  are 
to  be  potential  rather  than  active.  If  we  mean  by  will  a  passage 
from  the  theoretical  to  the  actual  then  it  is  submitted  that  in  a 
'completed  experience'  there  is  no  room  for  will  in  the  finite.  We 
get  no  further  than  a  clearly  defined  purpose,  held,  as  yet,  theore- 
tically. If  any  element  is  added  in  this  period  to  the  principle 
of  individuation  in  accounting  for  the  human  personality  it  is 
this,  that  there  must  be  (if  action  could  take  place)  such  expres- 
sion as  will  do  justice  to  the  more  instinctive  parts  of  man's  nature. 
Much  of  our  past  experience  is  still  with  us  in  the  form  of  an 
attitude  which  is  largely  non-conscious. 


1.     John   Dewey    (in   the   Philosophical   Review    (1906)    page   472)    writing  of  thought's 
work    says — "It    serves    to    valuate    organizations   already    existent    as   biological    func- 
tions and  instincts,  while,  as  itself,  a  biological  activity,  it  redirects  them  to  new 
conditions   and   results."    (Black-face   type   is   mine.) 


58  Eoyce   and  Individuation, 

III. 

In  the  third  period,  the  principle  of  individuation  is  loyalty 
to  a  cause,  which,  metaphysically  viewed,  is  loyalty  to  a  commun- 
ity or  in  its  cognitive  fonn  Interpretation.2  It  is  still  a  'finished' 
world  when  a  synoptic  survey  includes  past,  present  and  future. 
We  can  allow  then,  to  the  finite,  interpretation  as  a  theoretical 
or  reflective  process  only.  Except  in  the  novelty  of  the  triadic  form 
by  which  man's  social  nature  is  proved,  it  seems  identical  with 
the  position  of  the  first  period  where  reflection  is  taken  as  the 
principle  of  individuation. 


IV. 


If,  however,  we  hold  that  the  facts  of  finite  experience  do  not 
imply  a  'completed  experience7,  and  if  we  hold  that  our  author 
has  brought  this  theory  of  the  Absolute  to  the  facts  rather  than 
found  it  there,  then  we  may  ignore  the  doctrine  of  the  Absolute 
and  note  Royce's  exposition  of  the  place  and  individuation  of  the 
human  being  in  the  universe.  The  human  achievements  in  the 
time-experience  will  no  longer  be  negligible  temporal  replicas  of 
eternal  realities. 

That  which  constitutes  the  finite  individual  a  human  person- 
ality is  the  power  of  mind.  It  will  not  be  reflection  alone,  con- 
sidered as  a  contemplative  observation  of  the  world-order.  Vet 
it  will  involve  such.  It  will  not  be  will  or  purpose  as  a  clearly 
defined  intention.  The  concrete  actions  will  involve  the  fulfill- 
ing of  this  purpose.  'A  satisfied  will'  can  then  be  posited  as  a 
phase  of  the  question  of  individuation.  In  interpretation  we 
have  a  renewed  emphasis  on  the  cognitive.  "Reflection  involves 
an  interior  conversation."3  It  is  social. 

It  must  be  noted  also  that  whether  the  principle  of  individna- 
tion be  reflection,  will,  loyalty  or  the  'will  to  interpret',  we  find 
all  are  used  in  developing  an  ethical  theory  which  I  have  called 
self-alienating.  We  are  to  live  the  life  of  the  whole  in  'imper- 
sonal' service.  We  are  to  take  'comfort'  while  our  lives  are  in- 
complete that  they  are  caught  up  in  the  triumph  of  eternity.  To 

2.  If  interpretation  be  more  than  a  merely  cognitive  or  reflective  process  it  signifies  such 
an    activity    as   means   loyalty    to    a    cause.     This    latter   whether   reasoning    or   non- 
reasoning  is  a  life  which  interprets  the  past  to  the  future.  . 

3.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  II,   138. 


Royce  and  Individual  ion  .">!> 

such  a  'cause*  we  are  to  'devote'  ourselves  'strengthened'  by  the 
knowledge  that  we  shall  share  or  do  share  in  that  eternal  triumph. 
All  this  seems  a  little  short  of  the  highest.  "Such  vicarious 
happiness  must  be,  in  fact,  the  greater  part  of  the  actual  joy  of 
any  living  man."4  But  one's  highest  comfort  must  be  found  with- 
in one's  own  will.  If  the  world  of  human  actions  are  contribu- 
tions to  reality,  then  the  making  of  some  contribution,  in  some 
way,  however  infinitesimally  small,  is  the  source  of  the  highest, 
satisfaction  and  will  mark  the  highest  reach  of  the  individual. 
If  one  sublimates  the  rather  empty  and  ruthless  self-assertion  of 
a  Nietzsche  or  unites  it  with  the  finest  and  most  intelligent  al- 
truism, one  will  get  that  which  is  most  characteristic  of  man  as 
an  individual.  The  principle  of  individuation  will  be  the  urge  ~~- 
of  life  toward  real  expression,  a  will  to  contribute  or  to  create. 
Nietzsche  calls  it  the  "will  to  power." 

4.     W.  E.  Hocking,  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,   p.  497. 


60  Eoyce   and  Individuation 

Part   II. 

CONSTRUCTIVE   CRITICISM. 
CHAPTER   IX. 

The   Absolute. 
L 

If  we  count  finite  fact  real  enough  to  serve  as  a  point  of 
departure,  what  we  achieve  logically  must  'not  destroy  that 
reality  in  our  starting  point.  Yet  free  individuals  in  a  real 
time-experience  and  an  Absolute  whose  world  is  eternally  and~ 
completely  perfect  are  two  incompatible4  conceptions.  An 
Absolute  whose  thought  is  eternally  fulfilled  means  a  world 
which  is  finished.  There  are  no  loose  edges  for  it  is  given  all 
at  once.  The  perfect  realization  of  th«  thcoght  of  the  Absolute 
is  eternal.  This  leaves  no  room  for  free  individuals  and  there 
is  indeed  no  reason  for  any  temporal  manifestation.  If  we 
pass  over  this  ultimate  lack  of  reason  why  there  should  be  any 
finite  processes  in  time,  or  any  manifestation  of  free  indi- 
viduals, and  if  we  admit  the  unexplained  existence  of  free  indi- 
viduals, we  are  at  a  loss  to  see  what  the  finite  individual  can 
do.  The  universe  is  eternally  complete.  The  finite  being  then 
can  make  no  difference  to  reality  for  all  that  needs  doing  is 
done  and  that  eternally.  If  we  grant  further  that  something 
is  done,  then  since  it  can  be  no  contribution  to  reality,  that 
something  must  be  of  the  nature  of  appearance.  This  would 
make  the  relation  of  the  finite  to  the  infinite  an  Appearance. 
Reality  relation.  What  further  can  be  the  nature  of  this 
appearance?  What  is  done  must  not  make  any  difference  to 
the  whole,  not  even  in  the  way  of  novelty.  There  must  be  no 


1.  John  Dewey  (in  Phil.  Rev.  1906,  p.  469  f.)  says  "idealism  is  condemned  to  move 
back  and  forth  between  two  inconsistent  interpretations  of  a  priori  thought.  It 
is  taken  to  mean  both  the  organized,  the  regulated,  the  informed,  established 
character  of  experience,  an  order  immanent  and  constitutional;  and  that  which 
organizes,  regulates,  forms,  synthesizes,  a  power  transcendent  and  noumenal.'  .  .  . 
"the  first  sense,  if  validated,  would  leave  us  at  most  an  empirical  fact,  whose 
importance  would  make  it  none  the  lesg  empirical.  The  second  sense,  by  itself, 
would  be  so  thoroughly  transcendental  that  while  it  would  exalt  'thought'  in 
theory,  it  would  deprive  the  categories  of  that  constitutional  position  within  ex- 
perience," This  criticism  is  valid  if  the  whole  is  a  'completed  experience'.  In 
that  case  the  'thought'  of  the  finite  individual  can  contribute  nothing  to  experience. 
No  doubt  the  finite  finds  qualities  which  are  primary  but  it  supplies  or  creates  the 
Hooondary  ones. 


Royce   and   ludicidtialioh  61 

originality.  It  must  be  an  appearance  of  what  is  already 
eternally  existent.  One  must  seem  to  live  the  life  that  is 
eternally  perfect,  and  to  serve  the  Universal  Will.  The  ideal 
of  duty  for  such  finite  beings  will  be  the  service  of  'imper- 
sonal' ends  and  hence  a  life  of  self -alienation.  If  we  alloM* 
the  unexplained  existence  and  the  unaccounted-for  activity  of 
finite  and  free  individuals,  the  logical  form  of  life  would  be 
<this  life  of  resignation  and  devotion.  And  this  doctrine  of 
self-alienation  is  found  throughout  the  philosophy  of  Prof. 
Royce.  It  is  more  than  doubtful  whether  the  doctrine  of  a 
closed  world  or  a  completed  experience  is  derivable  logically 
from  finite  experience.2  But  if  we  forget  logic  for  the  moment 
and  posit  free  individuals  within  a  'finished  world  their 
manifestations  are  appearance,  negligible  temporal  replicas  of 
eternal  realities. 

As  brought  our  in  his  first  book,  the  finite,  as  thinker,  is 
able  to  understand,  and  passively  to  know  the  nature  of  the 
whole.  He  is  a  valid  thinker.  But  such  thinking  makes  no 
real  'difference  to  the  whole.  It  might  be  objected  that  as 
thinking  is  a  form  of  existence  even  the  moments  of  reflection 
as  novelties  would  be  impossible  in  a  'completed  experience'. 
But  of  course  a  finite  thinker  assumes  the  validity  of  thought 
even  if  he  were  trying  to  deny  it.  This  capacity  for  thought, 
enables  the  finite  individual  to  understand  the  world  process 
and  gives  him  that  which  he  may  copy  in  the  life  of  appearance 
which  alone  is  open  to  him.  This  copying  implies  the  solf- 
alienation  which  seems  to  be  the  ethical  doctrine  of  our  author. 

Finite  beings*  following  this  vicarious  ideal,  are  to  seek 
"impersonal"3  end's  and  organizations.  In  such  attainment  we 
'"lose  our  lives"*  as  separate  private  selves.  '"'We  are  instru- 
ments"5 unable  ourselves  to  "attain  the  Absolute  Moral  in- 
sight."6 The  "vast  ocean  of  life"7  or  the  "surging  tides  of  the 
Infinite  Ocean"8  receive  us  who  are  "drops  in  this  ocean  of  the 
Absoute  truth."9 


2.  It   should  be   noted  that   as   we   regard   finite   experience,    we   see   a    growth   in   in- 
clu'siveness.      But   it   is   our   knowledge   of  reality   which   is   becoming   greater,    not 
an   ever-widening   of   experience   as   direct   and   immediate   relation   to   objects.      In 
"The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy"  pp.  393,  405,  Royce  speaks  of  an  "organism 
of  thought"  and  the  "organic  unity  of  a  series  of  judgments".      This  seems  to  im- 
ply that  our  experience  as  direct  is  ever  widening,  which  is  not  the  case.      See  on 
this  point  A    K.  Rogers  in  the  Philosophical  Review,   vol.    12,   p.   48  f. 

3.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  pp.  211-213,  464.      4.  Ibid.  442,  see  also  181. 

200  1.   193,   218  f.      5.  Ibid.   215.      6.  Ibid.   168.      7.  Ibid.    216.    8.    Ibid  217. 
0.    TMrl   -M1  . 


62  Iloyce    and   Individual  iou 

II. 

But  Iloyce  writes  of  the  finite  as  a  'part'  of  the  whole.  In 
the  Supplementary  Essay  in  the  first  volume  of  The  World 
and  the  Individual  this  part-whole  relation  is  dealt  with  from 
analogies  found  in  the  mathematical  sciences.  In  a  Self- 
Representative  System,  the  part  is  equal  to  the  whole  or  is  the 
image  of  the  whole.  In  this  part-whole  relation,  Iloyce  means 
by  'part',  not  any  mechanically  separated  part,  but  a  significant 
part  or  a  constituent  element  of  a  dynamic  whole.  To  follow 
this  analogy  of  the  Self-Representative  System  the  whole  ap- 
pears in  each  part10  and  the  part  is  the  image  of  the  whole. 
We  are  'parts'  of  the  whole  in  some  such  significant  sense' 

Now  I  submit  there  is  no  room  in  a  closed  or  finished  world 
for  'parts'  of  that  nature.  If  a  part  is  an  image  of  the  whole 
in  any  real  sense  then  it  must  have,  in  some  degree  however 
slight,  the  power  of  making  a  real  difference  in  the  world  and 
to  the  world  such  as  we  ascribe  to  the  Universal  Will.  If  the 
Will  of  the  Absolute  is  eternally  and  completely  fulfilled,  then 
the  wills  of  'parts'  of  that  Absolute  Subject  must  be  included 
in  that  which  is  fulfilled.  If  the  'part'  has  a  will,  unfulfilled 
in  the  sense  at  least  that  it  needs  the  realization  which  it  getis 
in  time,  then  that  will  as  a  constituent  element  of  the  Absolute 
Will  is  not  yet  realized  and  hence  a  completed  experience  for 
the  whole  is  impossible. 

III. 

Time-experience  is  real  only  in  an  infinitely  unfinished  uni- 
verse. It  is  made  unreal  and  unnecessary  and  indeed  incon- 
ceivable in  a  finished  world.  Yet  it  is  from  a  bit  of  time- 
experience  that  Royce  takes  his  departure.  His  Absolutism 
seems  to  deny  the  foundation  upon  which  it  is  built.  What  is 
this  foundation?  What  does  the  finite  know  of  time  and  its 
transcendence  t  We  are  told  that  "the  true  distinction,  and  the 
true  connection,  between  the  temporal  and  the  eternal  aspects 
of  Being,  furnish,  in  truth,  the  basis  for  the  solution  of  this 
whole  problem."11 

First,  I  have  a  direct  experience  of  a  time-span.  I  hold 
in  consciousness  more  than  the  mere  instant  of  time.  I  may 
increase  this  a  little  in  practice.  In  this  sense  then  I  transcend 


10.    See  the  World  and  the  Individual,  I,  p.  468.      11.  Ibid.  II,   347, 


Royce    and   Individual  ion  0-J 

time  that  I  can  hold  in 'consciousness  more  than  an  immediately 
present  moment  or  instant.  ISTow,  in  this  time-span  transcen- 
dence, there  is  no  hint  of  any  ability  to  get  within  the  time-span 
the  future  as  such.  In  this  transcendence  too  the  full  nature  of 
time  as  actual  is  found. 

Again,  I  transcend  time  in  another  way.  Much  of  my  ex- 
perience is  past.  Physiologists  and  psychologists  tell  us  that 
none  of  this  is  lost.  It  exists  in  some  physiological  or  psychic 
form.  I  have  the  idea  equivalents  of  my  actual  experiences 
which  are  past.  These  need  not  be  considered  as  necessarily 
in  consciousness.  They  are  implicit  in  my  attitude.  This 
being  so,  I  hold  my  past  in  any  moment  of  my  experience.  But 
here  again  there  is  no  hint  of  the  inclusion  of  the  future. 

While  past  experiences  are  held,  they  are  held  in  an  inter- 
preted way.  The  essential  direction  is  kept  but  abstraction  is 
made  from  the  actual  stretch  of  time.  The  time-span  trans- 
cendency alone  is  direct  and  immediate  while  the  interpreted 
form  alone  promises  all-mclusiveness.  If  the  time-span  were 
all-inclusive  the  second  form  of  time-transcendence  would  not 
figure  as  it  does  with  us.  But  the  time-span  gives  no  promise 
of  such  inclusiveness.  The  other  form  has  such  promise  but 
the  future  must  have  become  present  in  order  to  take  this  form. 
This  implies  the  full  reality  of  the  time-process.  In  its  -ill- 
inclusiveness  there  will  be  the  end  we  call  the  present  where  the 
process  is  ever  growing  by  biting  into  the  future. 

Now  I  can  find  no  other  form  of  time-transcendence  and  in 
neither  form  is  the  future  included.  The  musician,  holding 
the  symphony  as  a  whole  present  in  a  moment  seems  to  be  a 
case  of  the  second  form  of  time-transcendence.  He  has  heard 
the  symphony  before,  and,  abstracted  from  the  actual  time- 
stretch,  he  holds  the  music  then  in  the  grasp  of  a  moment.  It 
is  thought-content,  not  the  actual  music. 

Now  in  a  'finished  world'  or  'completed  experience'  all  tem- 
poral processes,  however  fragmentary  and  incomplete  are  in- 
cluded. And  not  only  are  the  past^nd_present  there;  but  the 
future12  also  is  eternally  existent.  I  submit  that  we  have  no 
analogy  in  the  finite  for  the  inclusion  of  the  future  in  such 


12.  Of  course  in  Royce's  view  of  the  Absolute  as  holding  all  of  time  in  one  time-span, 
there  is  no  future  for  the  Absolute.  But  it  is  future  for  us  and  for  us  the  future 
has  a  sense  of  non-existence.  If  it  is  actual  for  the  Absolute  it  must  exist.  Then 
what  I  may  do  to-morrow  both  is  existent  and  non-existent.  This  is  obscure. 
We  might  think  of  a  time  span  including  the  past  up  to  the  present.  But  to  in- 
clude the  non-oxistont  futuTe  is  impossible.  At  least  it  seems  so  to  me. 


64:  Royce   and  Individ  nation 

1  time-transcendence  and  hense  it  is  an  unmeaning13  statement, 
|  to  say  that  the  future  is  present  eternally  to  the  Absolute. 

vX/    ^either  form  of  time-transcendence  found  in  the  finite  give* 
/ 
/      a  hint  of  such  forestalling  of  the  actual  coming  of  the  future 

L  into  the  present.  The  form  of  time-transcendence,  as  inclusive 
of  the  future,  makes  time  unreal,  and,  as  stated  above,  this 
*  cuts  away  the  foundation  of  fact  on  which  the  doctrine  -of  the 
Absolute  is  built.  I  submit  that  we  must  hold  to  the  reality 
of  the  temporal  and  in  no  way  go  beyond  the  limits  set  by  what 
we  know  of  time-transcendence  in  our  own  experience. 

Prof.  Royce  has  passed  beyond  these  limits.  Dealing  with 
time  transcendence  in  the  Absolute,  he  has  spoken  of  it  as  a 
time-span.14  He  refers  to  the  time-span  of  the  finite,  and  car- 
ries it  over,  in  analogy,  to  the  time-span  of  the  "eternal  con 
sciousness."15  "The  type  of  empirical  unity  is  the  guide." 
"The  eternal  insight  observes  the  whole  of  time."16  "The 

f  difference  is  merely  one  of  span."1  Yet  we  find  that  the 
future  turns  up  as  included  in  the  time-span  of  the  Eternal. 
Or  again  something  of  the  second  type  of  time-transcendence 
is  noted  for  "Time  is  known  to  us,  both  perceptually,  as  the 
psychologists  would  say,  and  conceptually."18  There  is  the 
'specious  present'  or  time-span,  and  also  the  ability  to  hold  a 
past  even  event  as  present  in  consciousness.  I  submit  that  there 
is  here  a  confusion  of  two  kinds  of  time  transcendence,  and  nlso 
a  false  inclusion  of  the  future.  The  attempt  to  leave  the 
choice  of  the  future  to  the  determination  of  the  individual1" 


13.  Wm.  James  in  "The  Will  to  Believe"  p.  181  note  says,  "a  mind  to  whom  all  time 
is  simultaneously  present  must  see  all  things  under  the  form  of  actuality  or  under 
somo  form  to  us  unknown.      If  he   thinks  certain  moments  as  ambiguous  in   their 
content  while  future,   he  must  simultaneously  know  how  the  ambiguity  will  have 
to  be  decided  when  they  are  past."      This   seems  a  gratuitous  fiction. 

In  an  address  in  the  year  1907  on  "The  Relation  of  Time  to  Eternity"  (and  quoted 
by  A.  O.  Lovejoy  in  The  Philosophical  Review,  1909,  p.  497  f.)  J.  M.  McTaggarfc 
says,  "When  taking  Time  as  real  as  we  must  do  in  every  day  life,  we  are  en- 
deavouring to  estimate  the  relation  of  Time  to  Eternity.  We  may  legitimately  say 
that  Eternity  is  future" ....  "We  must  conceive  of  the  Eternal  as  the  final  stage 

in  the  time  process Time  runs  up  to  Eternity  and  ceases  in  Eternity."  The 

states  of  the  time-process  are  increasingly  adequate  in  their  representation  of 
reality.  Full  adequacy  would  mean  the  ceasing  of  the  process.  We  would  have 
timeless  reality.  Eternity  is  rather  the  successor  of  time  than  that  which  holds 
the  time-process  in  a  time-span. 

14.  If  the  Absolute  includes  the  whole  of  time  in  a  time-span  then  it  would  seem  to 
imply  that  the  particular  moments  would  be  alike  indifferent  to   the   eternal  and 
ever    remain    fragmentary.     Yet    we    read    again    that    "when    I    consciously    and 
uniquely   will,   it   is   I   then   who   just   here   am    God's   will   or  who   just   here   con- 
sciously act  for  the  whole."      (Compare  the  World  and  the  Individual,   I,  pp.  425 
and  468.)      Here  are  two  contradictory  ideas  of  the  whole,  one  is  static,  the  other 
dynamic.      The  former,    if  held,   would  certainly  call   for   duplicate   experiences   for 
infinite   and   finite.      The   second   would   seem   to    cancel   human   initiative   and   the 
time-span  of  the  static   theory.     Just  how  the  future  can  be  eternally  present  in 
such  a  dynamic  whole  is  not  clear. 

15.  The  World  and  the  Individual,   I,  421,   425.      16.  Ibid.  II,   144,  see  also  147.     17. 
Ibid.   It,    145.      18.   Ibid   II,    113,    115.      19.    See   Ibid   ii,    148. 


lioyce   and  Individual  ion  C5 

is  more  just  to  the  facts  than  to  the  logic  of  his  position.     How 
can  the  future  be  present  and  yet  the  choices  be  unmade1? 

When  we  come  to  the  third  period,  it  seems  to  me,  Koyce 
is  using  in  his  doctrine  of  interpretation  the  second  form  of 
time-transcendence.  My  past  is  with  me  in  the  present  as  I 
face  the  future.  Every  experience  helps  to  make  me  what  I 
am  and  what  I  am  affects  the  experiences  that  I  am  having. 
My  attitude  makes  a  difference  in  the  present  to  the  events 
that  are  transpiring  with  me.  "The  time-order,  in  its  sense 
and  interconnection,  is  known  to  us  through  interpretation,  and 
is  neither  a  conceptual  nor  yet  a  perceptual  order."20  Inter- 
pretation is  triadic.  "The  present  interprets  the  past  to  the 
future."21  Yet  even  this  use,  which  seems  to  give  to  the  future 
its  true  place,  is  vitiated  by  the  dragging  in  of  the  older  time- 
span  conception  and  that  too  as  inclusive  of  the  future.  The 
"whole  time-process  is  in  some  fashion  spanned  by  one  in- 
sight."2 We  read  of  "a  synoptic  survey  of  the  whole  of 
time."2  It  is  based  on  "the  power  of  an  individual  self  to 
extend  his  life,  in  ideal  fashion,  so  as  to  regard  it  as  including 
past  and  future  events  which  lie  far  away  in  time,  and  which 
he  does  not  now  personally  remember."2*  The  dragging  in  of 
the  future  on  a  basis  which  is  unreal  is  evident  in  the  passage. 
Surely  we  do  not  now  remember  the  future. 

It  should  be  emphasized  that  in  the  second  form  of  time- 
transcendence  which  we  find  in  our  experience,  the  past  is 
present  in  a  vicarious  or  representative  way.  It  seems  to  me 
that  interpretation  bears  the  mark  of  this  type  of  time-trans- 
cendence. If  so,  it  must  be  noted  that  the  past,  as  such,  is  not 
directly  and  immediately  present  to  the  Interpreter.  The 
whole  as  the  direct  or  immediate  relation  of  the  Absolute  as 
Subject  to  the  World  as  Object  is  not  conceivable  under  this 
form  of  interpretation  which  we  find  in  the  finite.  Interpre- 
tation implies  a  time-process.  We  have  an  attempt  on  the  part 
of  Royce  to  take  in  combination  two  phases  of  the  finite  which 
show  no  signs  of  uniting,  i.e.  direct  experience  and  all-inrlu- 
siveness.  I  submit  that  in  such  'synoptic  survey'  time  is  un- 
real. And  free  individuals  need,  for  the  reality  of  their  free- 
dom, a  time  experience  which  is  also  real. 


20.  The   Problem  of   Christianity,    II,    p.    155. 

21.  The  Problem  of  Christianity,  II,  p.   280.     22.  Ibid.  II,  p.   271,     23.   Ibid.  II,   p. 
286.      24.  Ibid.  II.   61.      (Italics  are  mine). 


G6  Royce   and   Individuation 

IV. 


th 


We  are  told  that  "foreknowledge  in  time  is  possible  only 
of  the  general,  and  of  the  causally  predetermined,  and  not  of 
e  unique  and  free'7  and  "hence  neither  God  nor  man  can 
foreknow,  at  any  temporal  moment,  what  a  free-will 
agent  is  yet  to  do.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Absolute  possesses 
a  perfect  knowledge  at  one  glance  of  the  whole  of  the  temporal 
order,  present,  past,  and  future.  This  knowledge  is  ill-called 
foreknowledge.  It  is  eternal  knowledge.7'25 

The  ambiguity  in  the  word  'eternal'  has  already  been  point- 
ed out.  It  may  be  said  of  the  'foreknowledge  of  the  causally 
predetermined'  that  such  seems  to  mean  that,  —  given  the  origi- 
nal cosmic  formula  and  assuming  the  conservation  of  energy 
and  the  indestructibility  of  matter  and  the  outcome  is  a  neces- 
sary result  which  one  may  deduce  or  predict.  But  is  this  fort- 
knowledge  'eternal  knowledge'?  It  is  the  assertion  of  'univer- 
sal validity'  rather  than  that  direct  and  immediate  knowledge 
which  is  ascribed  to  the  Absolute.  Then  too  the  combination? 
of  atoms  and  molecules  vary  and  change  and  while  the  quan- 
tity may  be  held  as  invariable,  the  arrangement  of  them  is  ever 
new  and  so  they  have  a  real  future  that  it  seems  impossible  to 
foreknow,  i.e.  as  regards  order. 

The  difficulty  is  even  greater  when  we  consider  the  so-called 
secondary  qualities.  The  order  and  arrangement  of  the  physi- 
cal, to  which  we  refer  primary  qualities,  is  ever  changing'.  In 
the  secondary  qualities,  we  see  that  which  the  individual  is  ever 
creating.2*  Xo  cosmic  formula  will  enable  one  to  predict  the 
moment  and  place  of  creation.  These  secondary  qualities  may 
not  have  the  gross  reality  that  physical  nature  possesses,  yet 
they  are  real.  AVe  have  here  "a  process  of  absolute,  unpredic- 
table, and  inexplicable  creation  of  new  realities  out  of  noth- 
ing."27 Just  how  these  new  existences  are  'eternally'  fore- 
known is  obscure.  Primary  qualities  may  be  known.  But 


25.  The   World   and    the   Individual,    II,    p.    374.     James    Ward,    in   "The   Realm    of 
Ends"  p.  313,  holds  that  Royce  here  distinguishes  between  God  and  the  Absolute. 
The  latter  is  inclusive  of  God  and  free-will  agents.     God  cannot  foreknow  but  the 
Absolute  does.      This,   it  seems  to  me,   is  a  misinterpretation  of  Royce. 

26.  See  "The  Problem  of  Knowledge"  D.  C.  Macintosh,  pp.   314,   323.   "Color.  ...    i* 
the  created  product  of  gpirlt" 

27.  A.    O.    Lovejoy,    The    Philosophical    Review    (1909)    p.    489.      A    paper    on    "the 
obsolescer.ee    of    the    Eternal." 


Eoyce   and  Individuation  67 

secondary  qualities  are  unpredictable.  The  arrangement  or 
order  of  the  reality  to  which  we  ascribe  primary  qualities  ever 
presents  novelties.  The  secondary  qualities  are  undoubtedly 
such.  Are  all  such  novelties  real  or  illusory?  A  'completed 
experience'  would  render  them  illusory.  The-  attempt  to 
find  their  reality  in  an  'eternal'  foreknowoledge  of  them 
leaves  the  point  very  obscure. 

V. 

The  term  "eternal',  if  used  thus  in  relation  with  the  term 
'temporal',  must  have  some  community  of  meaning.  The 
eternal  cannot  be  simply  'not  the  temporal'.26  A  blank  negation 
of  the  temporal  is  an  irrelevant  negation. 

When  then  we  read,  that  "as  there  is  an  eternal  knowledge 
of  all  individuality,  and  of  all  freedom,  free  acts  are  known 
as  occurring  like  the  chords  in  the  musical  succession,  precisely 
when  and  how  they  actually  occur."29  It  seems  natural  to 
suppose  that  the  term  'eternal'  has  some  functional  relation  to 
the  term  'temporal'.  But  the  'musical  succession'  is  only  ^ 
grasped  in  this  way  after  a  rehearsal  in  which  it  has  gone 
through  the  actual  stretch  of  time  of  playing.  ISTow  we  can 
hardly  think  that  the  present  time-order  is  a  second  rehearsal. 
The  illustration  from  music  involves  a  necessity  of  having 
heard  the  music  produced  at  least  once  before.  Even  in  the 
mind  of  the  composer,  however  rapidly  the  creation  takes  shape, 
it  takes  actual  time.  Afterwards  he  may  hold  it  in  an  all-in- 
one-instant  manner.  It  is  not  clear  then  what  it  is  to  have 
'eternal'  foreknowledge  of  a  first  production.  Time  and  eter- 
nity are  not  made  commensurable  by  the  juxtaposition  of  the 
terms. 

The  eternal  consciousness  is  in  some  sense  to  be  about  tem- 
poral and  changing  objects  and  further  is  to  include  and  indi- 
viduate consciousnesses  that  work  in  a  time-order  and  through 
successive  experiences.  I  have  shown  two  forms  of  time-trans- 
cendence in  finite  individuals.  Tu  the  form  of  a  time-span  or 
in  the  vicarious  or  representative  form"0  in  which  our  past  ex- 


28.  "The  Conception  of  God",  p.  348.      "The  Eternal  Now  is  simply  not  the  temporal 
oresent." 

29.  "The  World  and  the  Individual'/  II,  p.  374. 

30.  In   the   Philosophical    Review    (1902)    p.    405.      J.    Dewey    (reviewing   The   World 
and   the   Individual,    vol.   II)    Bays   "Prof.   Royce   seems   to   have   two   minds   about; 
time  and  two   about   eternity.     On   the  one  side,    the  temperal   process  in  each   and 
every  phase  is  equally  fragmentary  and  finite.      The  eternal  is  simply  the  temporal 
process  taken  as  an  object  of  knowledge  all  at  once.     Here  there  is  no  organic  re- 


GS  Eoyce   and  Individuation 

perience  is  present  with  us,  the  nature  of  time  is  not  lost.  But 
the  future  is  simply  not  jet  existent.  Further  we  may  note 
in  the  second  form  of  time  transcendence  that  the  finite  being 
in  his  increase  of  knowledge  of  reality  is  not  gaining  an  ever 
wider  and  wider  direct  and  immediate  experience  of  reality. 
The  time-span  transcendence  is  ever  limited  in  the  finite.  Suc- 
cession also  enters  both  forms  of  time-transcendence.  It  shows 
no  tendency  in  any  way  to  change  its  nature  to  simultaneity. 
It  is  a  native  of  the  time-order.  Now  in  the  senses  mentioned 
I  can  be  about  objects  and  events  in  the  time-order.  It  seems 
possible  to  postulate  a  consciousness  of  time-span  so  extended 
that  all  the  past  is  present  in  an  instant,  or  a  universe  which 
carries  its  history  ever  with  it.  But  eternity  is  to  transcend 
time  in  the  sense  of  including  the  future.  This  is  not  to  mere- 
ly transcend  time  but  to  ignore  it,  and  to  be  separate  absolutely 
from  it.  Time  and  such  eternity  are  incommensurable. 


VI. 


This  absolute,  Eoyce  holds,  has  individuated  finite  indivi- 
duals. The  Whole  is  a  "completed  experience"  in  an  eternal 
instant.  But  these  'parts'  pursue  a  temporal  existence.  Each 
part  is  temporally  ever  fragmentary  and  imperfect.  Yet  the 
nature  a'nd  reality  of  these  parts  are  necessary  to  the  complete- 
ness of  the  whole.  This  Eternal  is  then  in  relation  io  much 
that  changes.  Yet  it  loses  not  its  eternity.  It  is  eternally 
fulfilled  and  complete.  How  is  it  possible  that  a  relation  be- 
tween the  eternal  and  the  temporal  can  be  unchangeable  when 
one  term  in  the  relation  is  one  of  change?  1  cannot  find  that 
Prof.  Royce  makes  this  clear  and  to  me  it  seems  self-contradic- 
tory. 

The  difficulty  is  not  rendered  less  so  when  we  find  that  the 
complete  Self  of  the  finite  being  is  this  Absolute  Self  which  is 
the  Eternal.  One  might  ask  with  Sidgwick  "What  becomes  of 
the  unity  of  the  individual's  consciousness  when  it  is  thus  split 
up  into  an  eternally  complete  consciousness  out  of  time  and  a 


>  lationahip  between  eternity  and  any  particular  temporal  portion.  The  other  view 
is  that  the  meaning  of  the  whole  time-process  somehow  manifests  itself  in  every 
member  of  the  process.  Each  part  of  experience  has  an  eternal  meaning,  because 
it  really  embodies  in  its  own  significance  the  meaning  of  all  others,  being  linked 
to  them  in  the  Absolute.'' 


Ruyce    and   Indiciditation  69 

function  of  an  animal  organism  which  this  eternal  mind,  some- 
how limiting  itself,  makes  its  vehicle."31 

It  seems  but  just  to  demand,  that,  when  one  starts  from 
finite  experience  which  is  in  a  real  sense  a  temporal  experience, 
and  passes  to  an  eternal  experience  one  must  make  the  steps 
such  that  others  may  see  the  way.  If  this  is  not  done  the  pas- 
sage in  question  will  seem  mystical  or  even  verbal.  Until  time 
and  eternity  are  shown  as  commensurable  we  are  condemned 
by  our  thinking  as  beings  in  time  to  hold  that  time  at  least  is 
real  and  knowable  by  us.  If  time  and  eternity  are  incommen- 
surable, it  seems  but  words  to  say  that  an  eternal  being  has 
relations  to  a  temporal  one.  If  the  Eternal  Being  needs  in 
any  sense  the  endeavors  that  appear  in  time  in  the  careers  of 
empirical  egos,  then  the  eternal  being  is  not  out  of  time.  To 
assert  a  real  relation  between  the  eternal  and  the  temporal  re- 
duces the  eternal  to  the  temporal. 

We  may  challenge  the  right  of  Prof.  Royce  to  say,  before 
he  has  made  clear  this  relation  of  the  temporal  and  the  eternal, 
"Our  comfort  lies  in  knowing  in  all  this  life,  ideals  are  sought, 
with  incompleteness  and  with  sorrow,  but  with  the  assurance 
of  the  divine  triumph  in  Eternity  lighting  up  the  whole."*2 


VII. 


While  this  relation  of  the  temporal  and  the  eternal  remain e 
obscure,  it  seems  impossible  to  hold  that  the  Absolute  has  been 
proven  to  exist.  Hence  one  ca'nnot  say  that  the  problem  of  the 
principle  of  individuation  has  been  cleared  up.  And  if  the 
logical  relation  of  the  Absolute  to  the  finite  is  not  indubitable 
we  cannot  begin  from  that  larger  side  in  our  explanation  of 
the  lesser.  We  cannot,  that  is,  approach  the  finite  self  from 


31.  As  quoted  by  A.  O.  Lovejoy  in  Phil.  Rev.  1909,  p.  493,  from  Sidgwick's  "Lectures 

on  the  Ethics  of  Green,   Spencer  and  Martineau."    (1902)    Ch.  I. 

32.  The  World  and  the  Individual,   II,   p.   411.    (Italics  are  mine).     The  Problem  of 
the  presence   of   evil   in   a  perfect  universe   is   obscure   in   the   same  way  as   is   the 
question  of  the  relation  of  time  and  eternity.     For  Royce  there  is  eternally  present 
in   the   Absolute,   "the  evil   and   the  good   will   which  annuls   it.      But,    in  the  finite, 
there  is,    in   the   time-process,    the   suffering   of   suspense   and   of   the   sorrows   un- 
solved.    Just  how  the  Absolute,   in  its   eternal  and   simultaneous  consciousness   of 
the  evil  and  triumph  over  it,   could  have  the  grief  of  despair  and  hope,   deferred, 
seems  hard  to  understand.      While  the  meaning  of  the  term  eternal  is  obscure  one 
does    not    know    whether    in    an    'eternal    consciousness'    the    evil    and    its    sting    is 
present  at  one  and  at  the  same  time  with  the  triumph.      If  they  are  simultaneous, 
it  would   soem  as   a    'painting  of  a    sorrow'. 


70  Iloyce    and   Indicidualion 

the  side  of  the  wholeness,  a  world-view  which  we  have  reached 
in  thought  by  mere  contrast,  not  by  logic. 

I  say  contrast.  I  find  in  my  cognition  two  phases.  There 
is  that  form  found  in  direct  and  immediate  experience.  There 
thought  is  working  with  original  sensations  and  perceptions. 
It  is  conscious  of  them  as  new  and  as  marking  present  exper- 
ience. But  the  present  moves  across  the  narrow  time-span  of 
my  direct  consciousness  and  becomes  past.  The  actual  stretch 
of  time  is  eliminated.  In  memory,  image  or  kinesthesis,  the 
past  remains  on  in  the  present.  Thought  may  work  over 
these  memories.  In  doing  so  it  has  full  recognition  of  such  as 
past,  and  that,  in  whatever  sense  they  remain,  they  are  the 
equivalents  or  representations  of  past  experiences.  The  refer- 
ence is  not  lost.  Now  in  my  experience  it  is  this  knowledge 
of  what  is  past  which  grows.  It  is  present  with  me  but  not 
however  as  direct  experience.  It  is  a  knowledge  of  reality. 
The  direct  experience  with  its  narrow  time-span  may  widen  a 
little.  But  its  significance  does  not  lie  in  any  evident  tendency 
to  grow  ever  wider  and  wrider.33 

Xow  the  Absolute  as  described  is  a  whole  and  is  a  direct 
experience.  The  logic  of  my  finite  experience  is  ail  ever  widen- 
ing knowledge  of  reality  together  with  a  non-expansive  time- 
span.  Yet  it  is  this  latter  as  expanded  infinitely  which  is 
ascribed  to  the  Absolute.  This  is  not  the  logic  of  finite  ex- 
perience but  a  straight  contrast  based  on  the  concreteness  of 
my  direct  or  immediate  experience.  But  if  it  is  a  contrast, 
we  must  see  that  it  remains  still  in  the  region  of  the  formal  or 
conceptual. 

On  the  other  hand  there  is  logic  in  the  view  of  a  compre- 
hensive unity  of  knowledge.  It  is  the  unity  in  the  individual 
knower's  thought  and  life  manifests  an  ever  widening  reduc- 
tion of  his  experiences  of  reality  to  this  knowledge  form.  Wo 
have  thus  the  experiencing  mind  and  its  accumulated  knowledge 
of  reality. 

We  have  then  to  look  for  the  principle  of  individual  on 
not  to  some  all-inclusive  Absolute,  but  to  the  nature  of  the  in- 


33.  Kant  in  a  letter  to  Marcus  Herz  in  1780  writes  "that  we  cannot  assume  the 
human  understanding  to  be  specifically  the  same  as  the  divine,  and  only  distin- 
guished from  it  by  limitation,  i.e.  in  degree.  The  human  understanding  is  not, 
like  the  divine,  a  faculty  of  immediate  perception,  but  one  of  thought,  which,  if 
it  is  to  produce  knowledge,  requires  alongside  of  it,  or  rather  requires  as  its 
material,  a  second  quite  different  faculty,  a  faculty  or  receptivity  of  perception." 
(See  aa  quoted  by  A.  Seth  in  Hegelianism  and  Personality,  p.  33,  note.) 


Eoyce    and   Indicidaation  71 

dividual  in  himself.  We  find  a  certain  instinct  for  reality  or 
will  to  live  in  all  levels  of  human  life.  Some  unifying  and 
directive  value-seeking  impulse  is  in  even  the  pre-self-conscious 
stages  of  life.  One  might  postulate  some  sort  of  absolute  and 
personal  value  that  unifies  the  special  instincts  and  necessary 
desires.  Nietzsche  has  called  it  the  'will  to  power'.  If  power 
is  read  in  its  higher  meanings,  this  may  not  be  too-  vague  a 
title. 

And  now  it  will  not  do  to  select  some  high  level  or  phase 
of  individual  life  and  explain  the  lower  by  it.  To  speak  of 
rational  self-activity'734  as  the  mark  of  the  true  self  is  to  do 
less  than  justice  to  the  pre-rational  and  instinctive  levels  of  life. 
We  find  too  on  a  high  level  of  human  life  activities  which  are 
carried  on  in  habitual  forms  where  reasoning  or  reflection  is 
not  explicit.  There  is  also  the  intuition  that  succeeds  reflec- 
tion. 

The  Absolutist  tends  to  define  the  individual  in  terms  of 
content  or  relations.  This  enables  him  to  think  of  the  content 
in  a  large  way.  It  is  freed  from  the  limitations  of  time  and 
space,  from  the  peculiarities  of  individuals.  Of  course  he 
refers  to  actual  or  concrete  life.  But  because  we  must  sp'oak 
of  reality  in  the  words  and  terms  of  what  is  intellectual,  there 
is  always  the  danger  of  mistaking  this  intellectual  content, 
as  abstracted  from  time,  these  relations,  etc.,  for  actually  exist- 
ing selves.  Now  if  I  would  define  a  man  I  can  say, — the  name 
he  has  is,  etc., — he  lives  at,  etc.y — he  has  a  certain  business, 
etc.  But  I  can  not  say  that  when  I  have  exhausted  the  re- 
lations and  activities  or  content  of  his  life  I  have  given  the  \ 
individual.  I  have  assumed  him  in  every  concrete  situation. 
I  have  described  him  but  I  have  not  constituted  him  as  exis- 
tent. The  existent  individual  is  treated  by  the  Absolutist 
according  to  the  needs  of  his  argument.  To  maintain  his 
actuality,  the  individual  is  spoken  of  as  many  concrete  rela- 
tions held  in  unity  by  some  unifying  principle.  Then,  to 
provide  for  that  self-transcendence  which  is  the  indication  of 
the  great  and  inclusive  Absolute  disjunctively  embodied  in  the 
many  individuals,  we  have  this  unifying  principle  suddenly 
growing  more  tangible  and  the  various  relations  growing  less 


34.  This  is  the  term  pi-ef  erred  by  Prof.  Howison    (See  The  Conception  of  God,  p.   321 
note).     It   does  not   seem   to   me   to   take   into   account   the  significance   in   life  of 

instincts    and    desires. 


72  lloyce   and  Individuaiion 

so.     This  seems  to  me  an  hypostasising  of  the  formal  and  mi- 
f ying  principle. 

But  we  hold  that  the  Absolute  has.  not  been  demonstrated. 
Can  we  not  deny  to  thought  its  claim  to  finding  in  its  timeless 
abstractions  the  essence  of  individuality?  Thought  is  rather 
a  function  of  the  whole  life-process  than  an  end  in  itself. 

If  we  go  to  the  facts  of  life  for  our  data,  we  can'not  ignore 
the  psychological  elements  for  there  can  be  no  content  without 
psychological  embodiment.  Every  psychological  existence 
takes  place  at  a  specific  time  in  the  stream  of  experience.  Here 
in  this  concrete,  one  must  look  for  the  individual  and,  for  psy- 
chological theory,  the  original  datum  is  the  organism  already 
struggling  to  maintain  and  develop  itself.  It  is  from  this 
that  the  life  of  conscious  experience  is  slowly  differentiated. 
We  can  say  that  "there  are  many  centres  of  conscious  exper- 
ience, each  leading  its  own  life,  determined  by  its  own  ideals, 
yet  making  itself  effective  in  a  common  order  of  experience, 
and  doing  this  by  building  up  jointly  with  other  intelligent 
agents  a  common  \vorld  of  ever  increasing  richness  and  com- 
plexity."33 Here  we  are  not  among  rarefied  abstractions  or 
timeless  content.  "The  only  true  and  real  and  independent 
existences  are  minds  together  with  that  which  they  appre- 
hend."38 The  relational  content  found  by  the  analysis  of 
knowledge  is  of  a  merely  logical  character  and  we  must  not 
mistake  the  logical  exposition  of  thought  in  general  for  a  meta- 
physical determination  of  the  object, 

As  we  have  already  noted,  language  is  the  work  of  thought 
and  hence  all  that  is  expressed  in  language  must  be  universal. 
But  shall  we  say  that  what  cannot  be  littered,  feeling  and  sen- 
sation, etc.,  far  from  being  the  highest  truth,  is  the  most  un- 
important or  untrue?  This  is  what  I  mean  when  I  define  a 
man  in  terms  of  the  content  of  his  life.  I  cannot  mean  that 
the  business,  pleasure,  home,  etc.,  which  make  up  the  actual 
content  of  his  life  are  to  be  included  literally.  I  have  abstract- 
ed their  essence.  They  are  relations.  But  such  reasoning 
needs  to  know  that  "the  real  is  inaccessible  by  way  of  ideas .... 
We  escape  from  ideas  and  from  mere  universals,  by  a  reference 
to  tlie  real  which  appears  in  perception."37  A  mere  glance  at 


35.   C.   M.  Bakewell.     The   Philosophical  Review,   vol.  XX,   p.    134. 

3(5.  Ferrier   (Institutes)   as  quoted  by  A.   Seth,   Hegelianism  and  Personality,  p.   31. 

37.  F.  H.  Bradley.     Principles  of  Logic,  63,  69. 


lioyce   and  Individual-ion  73 

nature  suffices  to  show  that  its  leading  feature,  as  contrasted 
with  the  logical  necessity  which  links  the  different  parts  of  a 
rational  system  together,  is  its  pure  matter-t)f-factness.  This 
is  not  irrational.  It  is  rather  a  non-rational  or  alogical  char- 
acter. Things  lie  side  by  side  in  space  or  succeed  one  another 
in  time  with  perfect  indifference.  Of  real  existence  one  must 
say  "the  parts  seem  to  be  shot  out  of  a  pistol  at  us.  Each  asserts 
itself  as  a  simple  brute  fact,  uncalled  for  by  the  rest,  which, 
so  far  as  we  can  see,  might  even  make  a  better  system  without 
it.  Arbitrary,  jolting,  foreign,  discontinuous,  are  the  adjec- 
tives by  which  we  are  tempted  to  describe  it."38  The  Abso- 
lutist would  acknowledge  these  concrete  facts,  would  term  them 
the  Contingent  and  pass  by  way  of  contrast  to  the  timeless  and 
logical  abstractions  which  he  then  hypostasises  into  an  Absolute 
Self  Consciousness.  Now  logical  abstractions  can  not  thicken 
into  real  existences.  The  mea'nest  thing  that  exists  has  a  life 
of  its  own,  absolutely  unique  and  individual  which  we  can 
partly  understand  by  terms  borrowed  from  our  own  experiences, 
but  which  is  no  more  identical  with  or  in  any  way  like  the' 
description  we  give  of  it,  than  our  own  inner  life  is  identical 
with  the  description  we  give  it  in  a  book  of  philosophy.  We 
must  not  sweep  existential  reality  off  the  board,  under  the 
persuasion  that  a  full  statement  of  all  the  thought-relations 
that  constitute  our  knowledge  of  the  thing  is  equivalent  to  the 
existent  thing.  It  is  our  thought-equivalent.  But  something 
has  escaped  the  logical  net.  And  that  something  is  very  im- 
portant. 

It  is  submitted  that  Royce,  in.  common  with  all  Absolutists, 
seeks  to  evolve  a  fact  from  a  conception.89  Even  in  the  latest 
book  there  is  a  very  evident  endeavor  to  make  synonymous  an 
Absolute  as  Interpretation  with  a  Divine  Community  of  Inter- 
preters. This  latter  seems  no  abstraction.  The  former  is 
siich.  If  we  conclude  to  ignore  this  continued  insistence  on 
an  Absolute  and  accept  as  an  alternative  the  Community  we 


38.  Wm.   James.      Mind,    VII,    187. 

39.  A.  C.  Armstrong  in  a  review  of  The  Problem  of  Christianity  in  The  Philosophical 
Review   (1914)   p.   71  f-  asks  "Does  the  noetic  ground  compel  the  inference  to  the 
metaphysical  conclusion  ? ' ' 

In   The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,   p.   476,   Royce  tells  us  "Our  special  proof 
for  the  existence  of  an  Universal  Thought  has  been  based,   in  the  foregoing,   upon 

an  analysis  of  the  nature  of  truth  and  error  as  necessary  conceptions The 

Universal    Thought    is    infinite,    and    its    existence    is    proved    independently    of    ex- 
perience."     (Black  type  mine). 

John  Dewey  in  The  Philosophical  Review,    1902,   p.   406,   says  "Prof.   Royce  dives 
arbitrarily  from  the  region  of  concepts  into  the  chaotic  sea  of  experience." 


Vtt  Iloyce   and   Indlviduatlon 

have  retained  in  our  construction,  along  with  our  logic  of  re- 
lations, the  alogical  facts  of  real  existences. 

The  idea  of  reality  as  substance,  as  substantial,  is  very 
tenacious  of  life.  This  stubbornness  points  to  this  that  reality 
can  never  be  wholly  permeable  to  idea,  and  yet  we  do  know 
reality.  Reality  is  something  beyond  categories  and  predi- 
cates. 

VI I F. 

The  Absolutist  would  define  finite  individuality  i'n  terms  of 
contents  and  contents,  to  be  described,  must  be  stated  in  intel- 
lectual terms.  They  are,  to  that  extent,  abstractions.  While 
having  a  type  of  existence,  they  are  descriptions  of  reality 
rather  than  the  actual  things  described.  These  intellectual 
constructions  can  be  easily  merged  by  the  intellect  which  made 
them.  Hense  compounding  of  consciousnesses  seems  a  fact  or 
at  least  a  possibility.  But  this  is  solely  in  the  realm  of  the 
conceptual.  Existences  do  not  flow  together.  The  transition 
from  the  ideal  to  the  actual  is  the  transition40  which  is  not  clear. 

Finite  fact  does  not  give  us  much  light  on  this  point.  Ex- 
perience presents  to  us  two  features  as  we  have  noted.  The^e 
is  a  present  time-span  and  an  ever  increasing  knowledge  of 
reality.  When  I  remember  a  scene  or  a'n  individual,  the  actual 
and  original  experience  is  not  present.  Some  copy  or  symbol 
of  it  is  there.  The  significant  thing  about  this  symbol  is  its 
reference  to  that  original  but  now  past  experience.  To  say 
that  if  I  can  compare  the  copy  with  the  original  that  I  have 
the  original  and  hence  do  not  need  the  copy,  is  no  argument. 
A  fresh  view  of  a  scene  always  renews  the  representation  which 
I  bear  away  and  the  reference  to  that  scene  is  the  significant 
feature  of  it.  This  reference  does  not  arise  through  compari- 
son of  the  copy  and  the  original.  It  is  a  constant  feature  of 
the  symbol  alnd  hence  may  be  assumed. 

We  have  much  knowledge  that  cannot  be  said  to  have  come 
into  my  experience  even  directly.  A  friend  describes  vividly 
the  inside  form  of  his  house.  I  get  a  picture  of  it  which  would 


40.  J.  Dewey  in  The  Philosophical  Review,  1902,  p.  398,  says,  "In  any  case  it  is 
not  clear  what  justifies  Prof.  Royce  suddenly  to  turn  his  back  upon  ideal  con- 
structions and  fall  back  upon  literal  experiences, — seeing  that  his  whole  theory 
of  Being  is  based  upon  discounting  literal  experiences  as  fragmentary,  mere  hints, 
glimpses,  etc.,  in  favour  of  what,  for  our  type  of  consciousness,  must  be,  and  must 
remain,  a  wholly  ideal  construction." 


Royce   and  Indicidualion  75 

enable  me  to  go  about  it  in  the  dark.  And  I  have  not.  seen  it 
as  yet.  I  have  a  knowledge  of  that  house  which  has  not  en- 
tered my  immediate  experience.  In  my  knowledge  of  reality 
I  have  then  some  equivalent  or  representation  of  reality,  not 
reality  itself. 

But  when  I  examine  further  my  direct  experience  I  do  not 
find  that  sort  of  inclusive  unity  which  is  ascribed  to  the  Abso- 
lute. Whe'n  I  experience  a  house  across  the  street,  psychology 
tells  me  of  certain  vibrations  of  the  ether  or  other  mediu>m  that 
fall  upon  the  retina  of  my  eye.  The  result  is  a  group  of  sen- 
sations in  my  mind.  Surely  that  which  is  concretely  within 
my  mind  is  the  sensation.  The  house  is  out  there  beyond  my 
eye.  Of  course  this  seems  to  put  the  mind,  we  are  told,  back 
in  the  skull.  Whatever  the  a'nswer  may  be  to  that  charge  it 
seems  as  if  an  attack  on  the  skull  has  more  immediate  effect 
on  the  mind  than  the  tearing  down  of  the  house.  My  direr-t 
experience  of  an  object  in  the  physical  world  is  not  a  case  of 
my  mind  expanding  to  include  it  literally.  Such  elasticity 
would  call  for  explanation.  And  such  an  expansion  ignores 
the  facts  of  vision. 

The  contention  is  made  here  that  in  both  my  direct  or 
present  and  my  past  experience  we  have  no  concrete  union 
such  as  is  ascribed  to  Thought,  or  Will.  We  have  to  distin- 
guish two  sorts  of  objects.  There  is  the  house  across  the  street, 
the  shape  and  color  of  which  I  become  aware  of  at  a  glance. 
This  is  the  actual  physical  object.  Such  objects  make  impres- 
sions on  us  through  our  senses.  Or  we  get  a  knowledge  of 
them  through  such  media.  We  have  further  the  object41  of 
knowledge.  This  latter  is  that  which  holds  over  and  becomes 
my  memory  of  the  house.  As  stated,  it  exists  with  a  specific 
reference  to  the  actual  physical  object.  Or,  if  in  my  direct 
experience  I  abstract  from  the  experience  my  consciousness  of 
mental  activity,  the  mental  content  remaining  is  this  object. 
The  sense  of  vision  is  acted  upo'n  and  I  have  a  sensation.  This 
is  what  I  really  experience.  I  am  on  both  sides  of  this  relation 
of  knower  and  object.  But  the  object  is  this  mental  content. 
This  object  has,  as  noted,  the  reference  outward.  In  the  know- 


41.  On  this  distinction  see  A.  K.  Rogers  in  The  Journal  of  Phil.  Psy.  and  Sc.  M., 
March  30,  1916,  on  "A  Statement  of  Epigtemologirnl  Dualism."  Ke  distinguishes 
"between  the  content  of  knowledge,  the  object  of  knowledge,  and  the  psychological 
existence  of  the  knowledge  act."  The  'content'  of  knowledge  is  "not  only  abstract 
in  the  sense  that  it  is  unlocalized  in  space;  it  is  unlocalized  also  in  time." 


76  Royce   and  Indiuiduation 

ing  relation  of  direct  experience  there  is  no  such  concrete 
union  of  the  knower  and  the  actual  physical  object  such  as 
is  ascribed  to  the  All-Knower.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  ex- 
perience which  is  certainly  not  actually  within  my  mind  in 
knowing.  If  I  hold  a  ball  in  my  hand  I  am  unable  to  sec  the 
farther  side.  Yet  I  do  not  seem  to  have  any  psychological 
evidence  for  believing  that  the  side  visible  to  me  is  concretely 
present  in  a  way  the  other  is  not.  My  knowing  is  of  the  ball 
and  the  farther  side  seems  to  be  in  the  same  sense  over  there 
as  well  as  the  side  next  to  me.  I  am  thinking  about  the  two 
sides  of  the  ball.  The  content  or  object  in  knowledge  which  I 
get  in  the  sensation  of  the  ball  is  such  that  I  add  in  imaginative 
presentation  the  other  side.  In  thought  the  ball  is  complete 
though  I  have  experienced  directly  but  one  side. 

What  I  wish  to  submit  here  is  that  any  reading  of  a  knowing 
experience  in  terms  of  an  actual,  bodily  presence,  i'n  the  unity 
of  my  experience,  of  the  physical  object,  seems  untrue  to  the 
facts  of  knowing  which  psychology  presents  to  us.  Neither  in 
my  direct  experience  nor  in  that  form  in  which  experience 
which  is  past  is  found  i'n  me  is  there  such  physical  presence. 
My  thought,  experience,  meaning,  will,  or  interpretation  all 
alike  lack  this  which  is  ascribed  to  the  Absolute.  An  analogy 
in  finite  experience,  being  absent,  such  experience  of  concrete 
uniofc  is  unmeaning  to  us. 

IX. 

In  the  first  two  periods  of  his  work,  Royce  is  dealing  with 
the  relation  of  a  finite  being  to  the  infinite.  I  have  contended 
that  the  larger  self  which  has  been  attained  by  contrast  is  not 
an  all-inclusive  Absolute  but  the  finite  self42  envisaged  in  con- 
ceptual completeness.  In  the  later  period  the  relation  with 
which  the  period  opens  is  the  relation  of  men  to  one  another 
in  society.  Royce  reads  the  self  as  in  reality  the  Self,  and  so 
here  'men  in  society'  is  read  as,  in  reality,  'Community.'  We 
have  here,  I  contend,  no  logical  and  existential  fact  but  society 
as  we  know  it  envisaged  in  conceptual  completeness.  It  is 
an  ideal  construction.  To  translate  the  social  world  as  we 
know  it  from  the  actual  time-process  into  some  super-temporal 


42.   See  W.   E.   Hocking.   "The   Meaning  of  God  in  Human   Experience,"  p.   290.   Also 
O.   H.  Howison,   "The  Conception  of  God,"  p.   104. 


lloyce   and  Individuation  77 

realm  is  freighted  with  all  the  obscurities  of  'the  distinction 
and  yet  relation1  of  the  temporal  and  the  eternal. 

The  attempt  further  to  gain  an  ultimate  and  all-inclusive 
unity  is  ambiguous.  The  u'nity  of  a  family,  a  state  or  a  crowd 
is  assumed.  The  mind  of  a  state  is  found  only  in  the  indivi- 
dual citizens.  The  genius  of  democracy  is  not  unification  but 
harmonious  differentiation. 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  the  Absolutist  reads  experience  in 
terms  of  direct  union  with  the  actual  objects.  These  actual 
unities  are  then  rarefied  by  translation  from  the  temporal  to 
the  eternal  realm.  We  have  timeless  content  and  relations. 
Such  easily  flow  together  and  we  have  the  Absolute — a  direct 
union  of  a  self  with  all  objects — a  concrete  self — consciousness. 

Now  (no  such  union  is  even  hinted  at  in  finite  consciousness 
and  all-inclusiveness,  as  shown,  is  not  an  ideal  for  the  time- 
span  of  my  direct  experience,  but  of  my  knowledge  of  reality 
which  is  intellectual  or  in  some  sense  representational. 


78  lloyce   and   Individualion 

CHAPTER  X. 

8  elf  -Alienation. 

I. 

In  the  philosophy"  of  Prof,  lloyce  we  must  not  forget  that 
finite  selves  are  not  objects  of  the  thought  of  the  Absolute. 
They  are  constituent  elements  of  the  Infinite  as  Subject.  They 
participate  in  the  essential  nature  of  the  whole..  Eoyce  re- 
peatedly refers  to  them  thus  as  'parts'  or  'fragments'  of  the 
whole.  As  'parts',  the  many  have  a  measure  of  separateness 
or  of  independence  of  each  other.  But  they  "freely  unite  to 
constitute  the  whole."1  "When  we  urge  or  seek  independence 
of  character,  we  must  do  so  only  because  such  independence 
is  a  temporary  means,  whose  ultimate  aim  is  harmony  and 
unity  of  all  men  on  a  higher  plane,"2  for  "the  One  Will  must 
conquer."3  If  one  inquires  of  origin  rather  than  goal,  one  is 
told,  "the  Will  individuates  according  to  its  own  needs;  and 
and  if  it  needs  for  its  fulfilment  free  individuals  it  will  possess 
them  and  its  life  will  be  constituted  by  theirs."4  Such  in- 
dividuation  is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  embodiment  in  ob- 
jects of  the  thought  of  the  Absolute. 

As  constituents  parts  of  the  whole,  the  career  for  each  is  to 
serve5  the  cause  of  the  whole.  "The  free  agents  of  a  moral 
world  are  free  only  in  so  far  as  their  essential  moral  relations 
ideally  leave  them  free.  They  have  their  place  and  must  stay 
in  it.  They  have  their  individuality  and  must  subordinate 
it."6  This  necessity  of  'subordination'  is  characteristic  of 
Royce's  ethical  theory  in  each  period.  While  admitting  that 
possibly  no  philosopher  has  worked  out  so  fully  this  necessary 
side  of  a  true  life,  the  criticism  is  offered  that  the  position  is 
one-sided  and  as  such  is  abstract.  'Loyalty  to  loyalty'  is  a 
merely  formal  principle.7 


1.  The  Conception  of  God,  p.  270. 

2.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.  216.      3.  Ibid.  p..  217.     4.  The  Conception 
of  God,   p.   271* 

5.  This  subordination  of  the  individual  has  already  been  traced  to  the  necessity,  in  a 
'finished'  world  where  even  novelties  would  be  impossible,   of  the  part  seeking  to 
'appear'  like  reality.     The  part  would  thus  seek  to  will  the  Universal  Will. 

6.  The  Conception  of  God,   p.   321.    ' 

7.  Royce,   like  Kant,    sets  up  an  absohite  principle  of   duty,    so   formal  and   spectral, 
that   it   cannot   be   said   to   command   anything   in   particular. 


lluyce   ai-d   Individual-ion  79^ 

Ivoyce  lias  a  way  of  drawing  out  a  contrast"  between  the  in- 
dividual per  se  and  objective  human  experience  to  the  great 
discrediting  of  the  former.  It  would  seem  as  if  he  seeks  to 
demonstrate  the  latter  by  the  discrediting  of  the  former.9  lie 
identifies  the  individual  with  the  private,  and  the  private  with 
the  merely  private  and  this  with  the  absolutely  exclusive  and 
isojated.10  This  prepares  the  way  for  a  declaration  that  this 
isolated,  private  will  must  be  subordinated  to  the  Universal 
Will.  The  criticism  is  offered  here  that  if  the  contrast  is  to 
be  thus  exaggerated  to  make  the  center  of  initiation  the  will 
an  empty  assertion,  then  the  other  side  in  the  contrast,  however 
rich  in  content,  becomes  a  ehoas  without  the  cause-producing 
initiative  of  the  will.  The  contrast  shows  a  necessary  relation 
and  one  which  is  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  pair  of  alternatives 
from  which  to  choose.  It  is  submitted  that  "the  self-regarding 
sentiment  is  the  very  heart  and  kernel  of  our  volition  and 
hence  of  our  moral  efforts/'11  This  self-regarding  sentiment 
is  not  to  be  construed  in  terms  of  callous  disregard  of  others. 
To  escape  from  selfishness  one  need  not  be  unselfed.  "When 
Aristotle  says  that  man  is  by  nature  a  political  animal  he  means, 
of  course,  that  the  individual  is  by  nature  such  as  to  find  his 
chief  good  in  association  with  other  men;  but  he  is  very  far 
from  meaning  that  the  individual  locates  his  chief  good  in  the 
good  o^  others,  or  that  his  attitude  is  in  any  sense  disinterest- 
ed." ....  "JSTor  is  the  grocer  in  business  for  his  health,  or  for 
mine.  It  is  indeed  true  then,  that  the  good  of  the  individual 
is  to  be  found  in  social  life;  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  he  is 
m  society  for  individual  ends."12 


8.  Martineau    (A   Study  of  Religion,   2nd  Ed.,   Vol.   I,   p.   205)    says   of  Royce.      "So 
long  as  the  author  is  engaged  in  contrasting  this  consciousness  that  'other  life   is 
as  my  life'  with  the  individualism'  of  the  hedonist,   of  the  sentimental   cultivator 
of   his   own   'beautiful   soul',    or  of  the   defiant   Titan   towards   all   that  resists  his 
fixed   intent,   he  easily  persuades  us  that  it  has   the  advantage  over   them  of  'in- 
sight' over  partial  blindness." 

9.  In    the  Hibbert  Journal,    vol.    No.    1,   Hy   Jones,    (reviewing   'The   World   and   the 
Individual')    says   that  Royce,    regarding  the  first   three  theories  of  Being  as   the 
only  possible  rivals  of  the  fourth  which  is  his  own,   and  noting   the  fourth's  sur- 
vival of  the  extinction  of  the  three,   assumes  that  therefore  it   is   true.      (See   The 
World  and  the  Individual,   vol.  I,  p.   348  f.) 

10.  John  Dewey  in  the  Phil.  Rev.  XXI,  p.   72    (in  reviewing  "Wm.  James  and  Other 
Essays")    charges   Royce  with  this  exaggeration  of  a  contrast,   in  order  to  intro- 
duce the  Absolute  as  a  necessity  in  order  that  the  gap  may  be  bridged. 

11.  J.  E.  Harrison  in  'Alpha  arid  Omega'  p.   91. 

12.  Warnei-   Fite.      Individualism,    pp.    168,    169. 


SO   .  Royce   and  Individuation 

II. 

In  the  earliest  period,  this  self  alienation  is  very  evident. 
The  end  that  is  sought  is  unification  of  all  life,  not  harmonious 
differentiation  of  excellence.  We  have  pictured  to  us  the  in- 
dividualism of  the  hedonist,  the  beautiful  soul,  the  Titan.  The 
unification  of  life  is  surely  better  than  these.  The  one  alter- 
native discredited,  the  other  is  credited  with  worth.  "The 
universal  will  of  the  moral  insight  must  aim  at  the  destruction 
of  all  which  separates  us  into  a  heap  of  different  selves,  and  at 
the  attainment  of  some~  higher  positive  organic  aim.  The 
'one  undivided  soul'  we  are  bound  to  make  our  ideal.  And  tfie 
ideal  of  that  soul  can'not  be  the  separate  happiness  of  you  and 
of  me,  nor  the  negative  fact  .of  our  freedom  from  hatred,  but 
must  be  something  above  us  all,  and  yet  very  positive."13  Each 
must  thus  break  the  bounds  of  his  own  individuality.  All  the 
many  wills  are  to  have  equal  footing  or  rather  all  are  to  coal- 
esce in  one.  "Having  made  my  self,  as  far  as  I  am  able,  one 
with  all  the  conflicting  wills  before  me,  I  must  act  out  the 
esulting  universal  will  as  it  then  arises  in  me."14  There  rc- 
suits  "an  organic  union  of  life."15  Our  relations  to  other 
minds  are  to  change  into  fusion  with  them.  The  "one  highest 

impersonal  work will  be  no  more  the  work  of  so  and  so 

many  separate  men,  but  it  will  be  the  work  of  man  as  man. 
And  the  separate  men  will  not  know  or  care  whether  they 
separately  are  happy."16  "A  wholly  impersonal  devotion"  to 
"the  impersonal  organization. of  life"  is  thus  the  true  life.  The 
impassioned  drama  of  personal  life  fades  away  as  we  try  to 
think  of  such  'impersonal  devotion.'  "Such  suppression  of 
individuality  in  homage  to  an  impersonal  social  organism  is 
a  relapse  into  the  ruder  tribal  life,  out  of  which  personality 
is  evolved  as  the  higher  stage,  with  its  noble  characteristics  of 
inalienable  trust  and  imperative  Duty."17 

But  "we  are  instruments and  we  must  be  ready  to 

sacrifice  ourselves  to  the  whole"18  for  "the  One  Will  must  con- 
quer."19 It  must  because  it  already  is  victor.  "We  know 
only  that  the  highest  Truth  is  already  attained  from  all  eter- 


13.   The   Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,  p.    193.      14.  Ibid.   p.    172  f.      15.   Ibid,  p, 
194.      16.   Ibid.   p.    211    f. 

17.  Martineau.      The   Study  of  Religion,   I,   p.   206. 

18.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,   p.    215   f.      19.   Ibid.   p.    217.      20.   Ibid.   p. 

478. 

V 


Royce  'and  Individuation  si. 

nity  in  the  Infinite  Thought,  and  that  in  and  for  that  Thought    " 
the  victory  that  overcometh  the  world   is  once   for  all  won.  \ 
Whatever  happens  to  our  poor  selves,  we  know  that  the  whole 
is  perfect."2      It  is  this  comfort  that  is  with  us  even  though 
"we  know  nothing  of  individual  immortality." 

If  we  have  not  here  an  altruism  which  sinks  the  self  in  the 
service  of  others,  we  have  &n  ideal  in  which  the  self  is  sunk  in 
the  impersonal  service  of  the  Universal  Will.  It  is  submitted 
that  such  unification  of  will  can  be  but  a  formal  principle  or 
will  to  have  such  a  will.  The  world  is  too  big  and  complex 
to  get  such  a  will  in  detail.  But  it  is  submitted  further  that 
such  depersonalizing  of  oneself  cuts  off  life  from  the  very 
spring  of  all  initiative.  "Man  is  a  being,  whose  life  consists 
in  trying  to  attain  what  at  the  stdrt  is  present  to  him  only 
as  a  demand,  and  because  this  sense  of  himself  takes  the  form 
of  a  strong  claim  for  satisfaction,  the  emotional  accompanimen  „ 
of  this  claim,  the  feeling  a  man  has  for  his  right  to  satisfac- 
tion, has  to  be  recognized."21  The  ultimate  test  of  this  'Uni- 
versal Will'  can  be  given  only  in  terms  of  satisfactions  to  in- 
dividuals since  even  social  welfare  is  an  end  for  me  only  as  it 
is  my  end.  Even  if  we  accept  this  ideal  of  a  Universal  Will, 
it  is  a  fact  that  the  nearest  we  can  come  to  it  is  a  "mutual 
realization  of  wills."  It  seems  to  me  also  that  its  moral 
character  exists  only  so  long  as  this  mutual  life  does  not  merge 
or  retreat  into  a  unity.22 

This  subordination  of  selfhood  is  the  story  also  in  'The 
Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy'.  "It  is  just  endurance  that  is 
the  essence  of  spirituality.  Kesignation  is  part  of  the  truth.- — 
resignation  of  any  hope  of  a  final  and  private  happiness."23 
But  in  our  finitude  we  have  one  'comfort'  for  "if  we  have  the 
true  insight  of  deeper  idealism,  we  can  turn  from  our  chaos 
to  him,  who.  is  our  own  true  and  divine  self,  and  can  hear  from 
him  -with  absolute  assurance  this  one  word.  'O  ye  who  des- 
pair, I  grieve  with  you.  Your  sorrow  is  mine.  I  suffer  it 
all,  for  all  things  are  mine:  I  bear  it,  and  yet  I  triumph,"24 
It  is  not  for  us  to  have  a  private  happiness  when  the  "Logos  is 
our  own  fulfilment."25 


21.  A.   K.  Rogers  "The  Rights  of  Man"  in   the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,   vol. 
22,    p.    423. 

22.  See  Martineau,   Ibid.  p.   205.        23.  Ibid.  p.  263. 

24.  The  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosopohy,  p.  470.      25.  Ibid.  470.. 


82  Hoyce   and  Individ-nation, 

in. 

Reference  lias  been  made  to  Royce's  use  of  contrast  and 
of  rigid  alternatives.  If  the  individual  per  se  is  taken  as 
absolutely  isolated  and  over  against  such  possible  life  is  placed 
the  rich  context  of  any  actual  life,  one  feels  that  the  latter 
must  be  chosen.  It  is  agreed  here  that  nothing  of  this  rich 
context  is  to  be  omitted.  It  is  agreed  further  that  most  of 
that  which  we  may  call  the  content  of  any  life  is  made  up 
of  this  context.  All  that  is  involved  in  vicarious  happiness 
is  not  to  be  slighted  for  an  instant.  The  contention  is  that, 
however  lofty  such  a  vicarious  ideal  may  be,  it  stops  short 
of  the  highest. 

In  actual  life  rigid  alt  ernativesyare  not  so  common  as  in 
conceptual  construction.  Xo  unmixed  individualism  exists 
except  in  the  constructions  of  thought.  And  no  purely  imper-  - 
sonal  career  exists  except  in  the  same  realm  of  ideals.  Actual 
life  shows  a  mingling  of  ideals.  One  may  pursue  one's  way 
indifferent  largely  to  the  welfare  of  others.  While  ruthless  in 
competitive  business  one  may  show  ideal  home  affection.  The 
issue  seems  to  lie  not  so  much  between  a  personal  demand  and 
an  impersonal  service,  as  between  personal  demands  and  per- 
sonal convictions  as  to  how  demands  are  to^be  realized. 

It  may  be  that  some  relations  in  life  seem  impersonal,  but 
they  are  rather  such  as  are  not  consciously  personal.  Many 
relations  in  life,  when  forming,  are  replete  with  personal  feel- 
ing, but  having  been  found  acceptable  and  satisfactory,  they 
have  taken  an  assured  place  in  the  habitual.  The  personal 
sense  has  become  implicit.  It  is  contended  that  a  cause  which 
becomes  impersonal  in  reality  soon  ceases  to  command  the  ser- 
vice of  mien.  ~No  impersonal  cause  'fascinates'  one.  It  is 
evident  that  the  distinction  of  selfish  and  unselfish  is  not 
synonymous  with  the  distinction  of  personal  and  impe/lbnal. 
Indeed  the  truly  unselfish  is  the  truly  personal. 

Psychology  informs  us  that  every  experience,  from  the  sim- 
plest up,  is  affectively  toned.  These  primary  elements  enter 
into  complex  forms  such  as  feelings,  emotions  and  sentiments. 
It  is  hard  to  find  any  other  finally  decisive  evidence  that  a 


Eoyce   and   IiuUcidualiou  *•''> 

certain  course  is  the  best  than  the  personal28  sense  of  satisfaction 
and  intellectual  approval.  The  intellect  might  in  theory 
acquiesce  in  a  sinking  of  the  self.  But  it  would  be  limited  to" 
a  theoretica^approval.  Real  choice  is  ever  between  personal 
desires.  "Hie  would-be  conqueror  is  not  happy  in  defeat. 
Choice  has  not  been  his.  The  patriot  is  not  happy  in  giving 
up  all  personal  satisfaction  to  love  his  country  and  to  die  for 
it.  The  conqueror,  in  defeat,  may  study  the  value  of  resig- 
nation. The  dying  patriot  knows  what  renunciation  means'7 
A  happiness  of  a  finer  strain  is  his  and  he  is  not  defeated  even 
in  his  death.  With  a  Nathan  Hale,  he  could  wish  he  had 
more  than  one  life  to  offer;  for  his  highest  desire  is  realized. 
Now,  as  noted  before,  the  limitation  in  the  view  of  Prof.  Royce 
is  not  that  he  does  not  mention  the  patriot,  but  that  he  deems 
his  death  for  his  country  an  impersonal  service  or  rather  a 
service  of  an  impersonal  cause.  It  is  contended  that  life  and 
its  interests  up  to  the  highest  are  personal.  My  country's 
welfare  is  an  end  for  me  only  as  it  is  my  end. 

When  I  read  that  moral  individuals  uhave  their  individual- 
ity and  must  subordinate  it,"28  it  appears  that  Royce  is  using 
the  method  of  contrast  and  doing  less  than  justice  to  the  fact 
that  the  springs  of  moral  conduct  are  ever  personal.  It  is  not 
a  sufficient  answer  ,to  this  charge  to  point  to  .the  personal  choos- 
ing of  such  subordination.  To  choose  to  ignore,  to  depersonali/e 
oneself,  if  possible  at  all,  is  to  cut  oneself  off  from  that  which 
is  at  once  the  source  of  initiative  and  the  ultimate  test  of  that 
which  is  acceptable.  One  might  ask,  if  all  choose  the  imper- 
sonal, who  will  initiate  a  cause?  Interest  is  a  term  with  a 
personal  reference.  Indeed  pure  altruism  would  be  possible 
only  where  great  leaders  were  not  pure  altruists. 

To  substitute  for  personal  satisfaction  and  personal  happi- 
ness in  the  temporal  a  resignation  which  takes  comfort  in  the 
somewhat  intangible  or  super-temporal  eternal  triumph  is  to 
do  less  than  justice  to  the  inherefnt  sense  of  personal  right.-  If 
the  temporal  process  or  experience  as  such,  is  only  a  super- 
ficial and  negligible  vehicle  of  eternal  ends,  why  be  even  im- 
personal? The  very  nerve  of  our  etodeavors  in  the  time-pro- 

20.  A.  K.  Rogers  in  The  Philosophical  Review,  1915,  p.  594.  For  the  approval  of 
new  issues  we  must  "go  back  of  institutional  reason  to  those  personal  springs  of 
conduct  which,  to  be  sure,  need  rationalizing,  but  which  nevertheless  in  themselves 
are  ultimate  facts,  that  set  the  direction  and  supply  the  motive  power,  of  all  our 
ends." 

27.  Seo  W.   E.  Hocking.      The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,   p.   501. 

28.  Tho   ConrpplioTi   of   God.   p.   321. 


84  lloyce   and  Individ  nation 

cess  is  the  desire  to  achieve  something  even  there  in  the  same 
time-process.  It  is  only  in  retreat  that  one  seeks  the  comfort 
of  a  second  best.  Even  if  "my  true  comfort  can  never  lie  in 
my  temporal  attainment  of  my  goal,"29  it  will  be  very 
discouraging  if  I  do  not  make  some  temporal  achieve- 
ment. Positive  action,  initiated  by  the  conscious  will, 
cannot  maintain  itself  if  this  sense  of  comfort  per* 
meates  one's  being.  Comfort  in  an  eternal  triumph  rather 
than  a  temporal  success  will  tend  thus  to  the  passive  a'nd  as  a 
principle  marking  the  highest  attainment  of  the  individual 
it  will  lack  "launching  power."30  Life  reveals  that  all  ends 
are  glimpsed  by  persons  and  pursued  as  personal  ends.  It 
does  not  present  the  rigid  alternatives  which  have  an  existence 
in  the  doctrines  of  lloyce.  In  a  world  too  large  for  any  one 
to  compass  even  in  his  thought,  we  seek  a  harmonious  differ- 
entiation of  life  rather  than  unification.  Even  if  I  attempt  to 
estimate  the  meaning  or  significance  of  the  world's  trend,  my 
account  is  very  deeply  influenced  by  my  pre-possessions.  These 
are  so  largely  outside  of  or  beyond  the  reach  of  direct  con- 
sciousness that  the  attempt  to  be  other  than  personal  is  surely 
futile.01 

The  self-alienating  ideal  permeates  the  whole  of  the  second 
period.  The  ultimate  ideal  is  unification.  To  this  end  the  self 
is  subordinated.  That  life  which  is  allowed  to  a  subordinated 
self  is  pictured  in  true  Rcycean  fashion  as  ever  temporally  in- 
complete and  disappointing.  Over  against  this  is  the  eternal 
triumph.  One  gets  a  joy  amid  defeat  and  subordination  in 
that  one  shares  in  this  eternal  triumph.  "In  the  Absolute  I 
am  fulfilled."32  Surely  something  of  my  zest  in  action  will 
be  lost  if  I  thus  lose  confidence  in  the  worth  of  my  temporal 
endeavor-. 

TV. 

At  all  stages,  in  his  work  lloyce  has  made  explicit  that  the 
finite  individual  has  the  privilege  of  choice.  In  the  earliest 


29.  The  World  and  the  Individual,   II,   p.   407. 

30    W.  E.  Hocking  in  The  Meaning  of  God  in  Human  Experience,  p.   500. 

31.  E.  B.   McGilvary    (in  the  Hibbert  Journal,   Oct.   1915,   p.   59). 

Writes,  "when  we  seek  to  see  with  open  eye  and  to  understand  with  open  mind, 
we  should  recognize  that  our  noblest  impartialities  are  partialities  eulogised. 
Their  nobility  is  derived  by  patent  from  our  fundamental  preference."  p.  62. 
"That  which  we  prefer  above  all  else  when  we  know  all  that  we  can  know  nLout 
it,  that  for  us  is  best." 

32.  The  World  and  the  individual,  II,  p.  409.     This  ia  the  point  of  view  of  the  whole 
chapter  on  Evil    (IX.) 


Roi/cc    and   Indlcidnatlon 

book  we  are  told  that  the  Divine  Thought  conies  into  the/con-  I 
sciousness'  of  the  individual33  It  is  surely  evident  that  it  f 
does  not  come  as  a  clear  cut  ideal,  but  rather  as  one  tentatively 
formulated  and  as  one  to  be  tested  empirically.™  There  "will  be 
no  distinction  between  the  ardor  of  service  of  .one  who  has  made 
a  mistaken  interpretation  and  the  ardor  of  one  who  has  had 
clearer  insight.  All  sorts  of  charges  and  counter-charges  will 
be  in  order  when  these  varied  interpretations  seek  for  universal 
application.  The  plea  of  impartiality,  of  conscientiousnesses,  or 
of  disinterestedness  will  hardly  avail  to  settle  the  positive  points 
under  dispute.  To  one  disputant,  the  position  of  another  will 
appear  as  biassed  and  personal.35  One  may  decide  to  choose 
impersonal  ends  and  to  affect  a  detachment  from  all  that  is 
merely  personal,  yet  one's  actions  will  be  read  by  others  in  terms 
of  personal  ideals  and  endeavors. 

Now  it  does  'not  appear  to  me  that  in  a  community  ^unifica- 
tion7 per  se.is  the  ideal.  Hence  a  unitary,  impersonal  and 
common  aim  is  not  the  essential.  An  harmonious  differentia- 
tion of  interests  appears  to  be  a  better  working  ideal.  The 
individual  then  springs  from  the  common  life  and  in  the  find- 
ing what  his  true  nature  is  or  what  he  is  built  to  do  or  achieve, 
his  distinctiveness  arises.  The  impulse  toward  individuality 
has  come  from  below  not  from  above.  I  mean  that  in  approach- 
ing the  question  of  individuality  the  biological  is  the  starting 
point.  The  endeavor  to  begin  with  the  thinking  and  willing 
of  an  Absolute,  while  productive  of  much  in  the  way  of  idea, 
seems  to  miss  contact  with  reality. 

In  the  third  period  the  natural  ideal  of  morality  for  a 
community  is  vitiated  by  the  effort  to  reconcile  community  with 
the  older  absolutism.36  The  all-inclusive  community  is  at- 
tained through  lesser  unities  which  are  true  individuals,  with 
minds,  wills,  etc.  All  this  is  to  be  attained  in  thought  by  the 
individual  consciousness,  and  having  attained  the  vision  of  these 


33.  See  the  Religious   Aspect  of  Philosophy,    p.    470. 

34.  "If  the  issue  between  moral  ideals  is  to  be  decided  by  the  issue,  why  should  one 
ideal  politely,  nay,  ignominiously,  withdraw  from  the  scene  of  conflict.     And  who 
is  to  fight  for  my  ideals  but  myself  and  those  who  share  them  with  me?    E.  B. 
M'Gilvray— Hibbert  Journal,    Oct.    1915. 

35.  The   peace   advocates   on   the    Ford  Armada   soon   found   that   great   causes   do   not 
voice   themselves   outside   of   the   limitations   of  persons.     No    supei-human   unitary 
view   was  forthcoming.     Even   harmony   existed   only   formally. 

only  formally. 

36.  J.  E.  Harrison  in  "Alpha  and  Omega"  p.   195,  says,   "Royce  intends  his  old  mon- 
ism.     Yet  his   emphasis   on   the   will,    then   on   the   community    Or   herd,    links   him 
back   with   the   newer   psychology   of   McDougall    which   is   not   monistic."      Ib.    29 
"At  the  outset,   what   draws  society  together  is  sympathy,    similarity,   uniformity." 


86  lloycp   find  Individuation 

":  higher  unities,  one  must  choose  to  serve  these  impersonal  ends. 

We  have  noted  the  difficulty  which  arises  in  that  the  indivi- 
dual is  to  be  convinced  in  his  own  mind  of  the  actual  nature 
of  these  unities  and  because  further  his  allegiance  is  ever  a 
matter  of  personal  decision.  I^o  matter  what  one  may  do,  it 
will  look  like  personal  origination  and  personal  ambition. 

The  only  reason  that  'loyalty  to  a  cause'  or  'loyalty  to  loy- 
alty7 seems  so  unmixed  a'nd  so  detached  from  all  personal  bias, 
is  because  they  remain  in  the  region  of  the  formal.  In  the 
realm  of  objective  conditions,  some  one  always  initiates  causes, 
and  in  so  doing  carries  to  an  outsider  the  appearance  of  being 
personally  interested.  Kow  it  is  submitted  that  this  must  be 
so  and  being  so  is  quite  natural.  If  there  is  in  men  in  society 
the  bare  determination  that  there  shall  be  a  law,  this  bare  will 
is  alike  in  all.  It  is  a  unitary  attitude  if  one  is  longing  for 
unity.  But  it  is  destined  as  it  e'nters  the  world  of  affairs  to 
break  up  into  innumerable  interpretations  of  its  practical 
meaning  and  application.  It  will  be,  no  doubt,  a  good  thing 
to  have  all  resolved  on  unanimity  rather  than  strife.  But  the 
actual  world  is  too  large  for  the  ambitious  dream  of  one  will 
embodied. 

While  the  alternative  position  of  the  third  period  opens  the 
w_*y  to  a  true  principle  of  morality,  the  ideal  of  self-alienation 
is  retained37  through  the  effort  to  retain  the  notion  of  an  Abso- 
lute. In  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,  in  the  chapter  on  Indivi- 
dualism the  idea  of  individuality  is  emptied  of  all  contents  ex- 
cept the  bare  boast  that  one  is  such.  The  man  who  holds  to 
an  individualistic  principle  in  morals  is  shut  off  from  the  real 
world.  He  can  but  'gesticulate'.  Hence  "there  is  only  one 
way  to  be  an  ethical  individualist.  That  is  to  choose  your 
cause  and  then  serve  it,  as  the  Samurai  his  feudal  chief,  as 
the  ideal  knight  of  romantic  story  his  lady, — in  the  spirit  of 
all  the  loyal."38  The  individualist  is  one  who  seeks  "only  the 
mere  collection  of /his  private  experiences  of  his  personal  thrills 
of  fascination."  The  loyal  one  seeks  "success  and  from  moment 
to  moment  indeed  thrills  with  a  purely  fragmentary  and  tem- 
porary joy  in  the  love  of  service.  But  the  joy  depends  on  a 

37.  See  "The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,"  p.  354  f.  "Your  true  gx>od  can  never  be  won 
and  verified  by  you  in  terms  to  which  the  present  form  and  scope  of  our  human 
experience  is  adequate.  Tim  best  that  you  can  get  lies  in  self-surrender  nnd  in 
your  personal  assurance  that  the  cause  to  which  you  surrender  yourself  is  indeed 
good."  Ib.  p.  369.  "My  success  is  real  only  in  so  far  as  some  conscious  life, 
which  im-lu'dps  my  uleas observes  my  SUCCORS."  Italics  are  mine. 


lloijce    and  Indie  iduaiion  87 

belief  in  a  distinctly  superhuman  type  af  unity  of  life.'<a 
The  criticism  is  offered  here  that  unless  a  cause  depends  on 
more  than  a  belief,  it  is  likely  to  obtain  little  more  than  the 
intellectual  assent.  Further  when  I  ask  myself  how  far  my 
citizenship  is  based  on  a  belief  in  a  superhuman  type  of  life, 
I  fail  to  find  that  such  a  theory  figures  much  in  the  matter. 
The  life  of  a  citizen  may  be  superhuman,  if  I  read  the  human 
in  terms  of  a  life  of  a  recluse  or  a  hermit.  But  to  the  average 
individual,  life  in  society  and  the  state  is  just  human  life. 
When  I  look  at  society,  it  appears  to  me  that  individuals  are 
seeking  each  to  live  his  own  life,  trying  to  find  out  his  own 
powers  and  seeking  to  use  such  in  accomplishing  some  line  of 
work  which  gives  him  true  satisfaction.  Where  I  find  people 
serving  causes,  I  find  individuals  who  deem  those  causes  to  be 
the  thing  which  they  most  desire.  There  is  plenty  of  evidence 
of  unselfishness  but  none  of  the  impersonal. 

We  are  told  that  "to  have  a  conscience,  then,  is  to  have  a 
cause,  to  unify  your  life  by  means  of  an  ideal  determined  by 
this  cause,  and  to  compare  the  ideal  and  the  life."40  Heie 
we  have  a  situation  struck  off  in  such  definite  terms  that  the 
doubt  arises  whether  it  deals  with  actual  human  life  or  moves 
in  the  realm  of  intellectual  construction.  'To  have  a  cause' 
seems  to  imply  that  causes  some  way  are  given,  are  there. 
One  has  but  to  cast  over  them  a  critical  glance  and  choose.  'To 
unify  one's  life  by  means  of  an  ideal'  seems  an  identical  pre- 
position. Surely  a  life  being  unified  is  a  life  which  is  form* 
ing  an  ideal.  The  doubt  grows  that  Royce  is  here  working 
among  conceptions.  Causes  in  real  life  are  not  given.  Some 
personal  faith  and  demand  brings  each  new  ideal  into  the  field 
of  experimentation.  There  it  must  prove  its  worth  and  that  in- 
volves those  who  are  ready  to  fight  for  it  as  an  ideal.  They 
do  this,  not  because  reason  has  looked  it  all  over  and  has  given 
its  sanction,  but  because  of  some  insistent  inner  compulsion. 
''The  force  of  an  ideal  depends,  not  on  my  finding  it  true,  but 
on  my  insistence  that  it  shall  be  true."41  Causes  have  their 
birth  back  in  individual  impulses  and  desires.  It  is  only  in 


38.  The   Philosophy  of   Loyalty,   p.   98.    See  another  interpretation,   J.    E.   Harrison   in 
'Alpha   and    Omegft',    p.    97   f.    says    "one  secret  of   the   intense  joy    in   loving  and 
being  loved  is  the  immense  reinforcement  of  one's  own  personality.      Suddenly  to 
another,   you  become   what  you  have  always  been   to   yourself,    the  centre   of   the 
universe." 

39.  The  Philosophy  of  Loyalty,   p.   330.      40.   Ibid.   p.   175. 


00  Royce    and   I  tidicid  nation 

Possibly  no  better  instance  of  the  self-alienating  ideal  m 
Prof.  Royce's  position  can  be  had  than  the  opening  paragraph 
of  his  speech  on  "The  Duties  of  Americans,  in  the  Present  war" 
delivered  in  Tremont  Temple,  Jan.  30,  1916.  He  says  "I 
fully  agree  with  those  who  believe  that  men  ca'n  reasonably 
define  their  rights  only  in  terms  of  their  duties.  I  have  moral 
rights  only  in  so  far  as  I  also  have  duties.  I  have  a  right  to 
my  life  because  it  gives  me  my  sole  opportunity  to  do  my  duty. 

1  have  a  right  to  happiness  solely  because  a  certain  measure 
of  happiness  is  needed  to  adapt  me  to  do  the  work  of  a  man. 
I  have  a,  right  to  possess  some  opportunity  to  fulfil  the  office 
of  a  ma-n :  that  is,  I  have  a  right  to  get  some  chance  to  do  my 
duty.     That  is,  in  fact,  my  sole  inalienable  right." 

All  this  is  admirable  if  one  has  a  clear-cut  and  adequate 
conception  of  'the  office  of  a  man'  or  of  'duty'.  It  is  possible 
that  very  many  sincere  people  would  agree  thus  far  and  yet  dis- 
agree with  Prof.  Royce  in  his  application  of  his  view  given 
above  to  a  specific  problem ;  America's  attitude  to  Germany  in 
the  present  war.  Such  difference  of  opinion  reveals  the  essential- 
ly ideal  nature  of  'right'  and  'duty'  as  here  correlated.  They 
are  stated  in  the  most  general  way  as  if  the  most  formal  state- 
ment had  a  very  definite  reference  in  the  world  of  actual  af- 
fairs. 'Rights'  and  'Duties'  however  are  not  there  as  'given'. 
Individuals  have  more  to  do  than  just  declare  their  allegiance 
to  duties  representing  causes  of  wider  scope  than  any  private 
interest. 

It  is  submitted  that  here  in  this  clear  distinction  of  'right' 
and  'duty'  we  are  in  the  realm  of  the  conceptual.  When  Royce 
seeks  to  connect  with  actual  affairs,  he  sets  forth  what  is  a 
quite  debateable  doctrine.  The  su'n-clear  ideal  does  not  give 
guidance.  One  side,  no  doubt,  would  say  Prof.  Royce  is  right, 
the  other  would,  at  the  least,  say,  that  he  had  stated  his  own 
personal  convictions. 

J  What  is  right  and  hence  what  is  our  duty  is  only  emerging 
A^gradually  in  the  natures  of  men.  To  make  'happiness'  nature's 
inducement  to  entice  the  individual  to  his  duty  is  to  do  less 
than  justice  to  the  place  of  satisfaction  in  any  man's  life. 
Some  way  it  is  not  objective  reason,  telling  of  duties  clearly 
placed  before  us,  that  settles  the  question  of  right  or  wrong  for 
us.  That  may  do  for  one  who  agrees  with  Royce.  But  how  about 


Jluycc-   and  Individua&dn  OL 

one  who  disagrees.  Some  say  that  disagreement  points  to  a 
more  ultimate  court  of  approval  and  disapproval,  the  individual 
himself.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  duty  stands  in  its  claim  apart 
from  individual  interpretation  and  approval.  The  distinction 
of  right  a'nd  duty  is  another  of  the  rigid  distinctions  which  are 
found  so  often  in  Eoyce.  In  actual-life  my  right  to  be  truly 
satisfied  is  my  duty.  I  find  no  way  to  choose  between  claims 
on  my  attention  than  some  sense  of  personal  satisfaction  and 
approval.  !No  evidence  which  does  toot  satisfy  me  commands 
my  acceptance.  So  far  from  my  rights  and  my  happiness  be- 
ing measured  in  terms  of  duty,  the  reverse  seems  nearer  to  the 
actual.  The  rigid  distinction  drawn  between  the  two  and  the 
preeminence  given  to  'duty'  seem  to  give  an  air  of  self-seeking 
to  the  word  'right'.  The  choice  however  is  never  between  a 
personal  and  selfish  right  and  a  larger  and  impersonal  duty, 
with  a  small  thrill  of  happiness  allowed  one  in  order  that  one 
may  be  enticed  oto  to  the  larger  patn  of  duty.  Even  duty  must 
not  be  read  in  impersonal  terms.  A  desire  to  further  the  wel- 
fare of  men  about  me,  if  it  wins  my  service,  does  so  only  be- 
cause it  is  that  in  which  I  find  most  satisfaction.  It  is  not 
impersonal  or  something  else  than  a  right.  It  is  my  right  and 
it  gives  me  most  satisfaction. 

GONGLU8IQK 

I. 

The  existence  of  the  Absolute,  I  have  contended,  has  not 
been  proved  by  Royce.  Hence  the  individuation  traced  to  the 
thought  or  will  of  the  Absolute  hangs  in  the  air. 

It  is  contended  further  that  the  finite  individual  is  defined 
throughout  in  terms  of  'content'.  This  'content'  is  hypostatised 
as  the  individual.  The  union  of  'consciousness'  with  its  content 
is  taken  as  the  union  of  thought  with  the  actual  objects  of  the 
real  world.  The  terms  'self  and  'experience'  are  also  ab- 
stractions of  the  intellect.  The  only  change  seems  to  be  that 
the  latter  term  with  'will'  marks  a  change  of  the  'content'  from 
static  to  dynamic  terms,  from  thought  to  thinking.  Will,  des- 
pite its  relation,  as  stated,  to  desire,  is  but  a  clearly  defined 
purpose^  an  intention  to  act,  and  hence  is  intellectual  and  ab- 
stract. 'Interpretation'  nlso  is  ideal  const  ruction. 


90  Royce   and  I  n-cl  tad  nation 

Possibly  no  better  instance  of  the  self-alienating  ideal  111 
Prof.  Royce's  position  can  be  had  than  the  opening  paragraph 
of  his  speech  on  "The  Duties  of  Americans,  in  the  Present  war" 
delivered  in  Tremont  Temple,  Jan.  30,  1916.  He  says  "I 
fully  agree  with  those  who  believe  that  men  ca'n  reasonably 
define  their  rights  only  in  terms  of  their  duties.  I  have  moral 
rights  only  in  so  far  as  I  also  have  duties.  I  have  a  right  to 
my  life  because  it  gives  me  my  sole  opportunity  to  do  my  duty. 
I  have  a  right  to  happiness  solely  because  a  certain  measure 
of  happiness  is  needed  to  adapt  me  to  do  the  work  of  a  man. 
I  have  a  right  to  possess  some  opportunity  to  fulfil  the  office 
of  a  man :  that  is,  I  have  a  right  to  get  some  chance  to  do  my 
duty.  That  is,  in  fact,  my  sole  inalienable  right." 

All  this  is  admirable  if  one  has  a  clear-cut  and  adequate 
conception  of  'the  office  of  a  man'  or  of  'duty'.  It  is  possible 
that  very  many  sincere  people  would  agree  thus  far  and  yet  dis- 
agree with  Prof.  Royce  in  his  application  of  his  view  given 
above  to  a  specific  problem;  America's  attitude  to  Germany  in 
the  present  war.  Such  difference  of  opinion  reveals  the  essential- 
ly ideal  nature  of  'right'  and  'duty'  as  here  correlated.  They 
are  stated  in  the  most  general  way  as  if  the  most  formal  state- 
ment had  a  very  definite  reference  in  the  world  of  actual  af- 
fairs. 'Rights'  and  'Duties'  however  are  not  there  as  'given'. 
Individuals  have  more  to  do  than  just  declare  their  allegiance 
to  duties  representing  causes  of  wTider  scope  than  any  private 
interest. 

It  is  submitted  that  here  in  this  clear  distinction  of  'right' 
and  'duty'  we  are  in  the  realm  of  the  conceptual.  When  Royco 
seeks  to  connect  with  actual  affairs,  he  sets  forth  what  is  a 
quite  debateable  doctrine.  The  su'n-clear  ideal  does  not  give 
guidance.  One  side,  no  doubt,  would  say  Prof.  Royce  is  right, 
the  other  would,  at  the  least,  say,  that  he  had  stated  his  own 
personal  convictions. 

What  is  right  and  hence  what  is  our  duty  is  only  emerging 
<Vgradually  in  the  natures  of  men.  To  make  'happiness'  'nature's 
inducement  to  entice  the  individual  to  his  duty  is  to  do  less 
than  justice  to  the  place  of  satisfaction  in  any  man's  life. 
Some  way  it  is  not  objective  reason,  telling  of  duties  clearly 
placed  before  us,  that  settles  the  question  of  right  or  wrong  for 
us.  That  may  do  for  one  who  agrees  with  Royce.  But  how  about 


a,:d   Indir'nl  nation-  91 

one  who  disagrees.  Some  say  that  disagreement  points  to  a 
more  ultimate  court  of  approval  and  disapproval,  the  individual 
himself.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  duty  stands  in  its  claim  apart 
from  individual  interpretation  and  approval.  The  distinction 
of  right  a'nd  duty  is  another  of  the  rigid  distinctions  which  are 
found  so  often  in  Royce.  In  actuaLlife  my  right  to  be  truly 
satisfied  is  my  duty.  I  find  no  way  to  choose  between  claims 
on  my  attention  than  some  sense  of  personal  satisfaction  and 
approval.  ]Sro  evidence  which  does  not  satisfy  me  commands 
my  acceptance.  So  far  from  my  rights  and  my  happiness  be- 
ing measured  in  terms  of  duty,  the  reverse  seems  nearer  to  the 
actual.  The  rigid  distinction  drawn  between  the  two  and  the 
preeminence  given  to  'duty'  seem  to  give  an  air  of  self -seeking 
to  the  word  'right'.  The  choice  however  is  never  between  a 
personal  and  selfish  right  and  a  larger  and  impersonal  duty, 
with  a  small  thrill  of  happiness  allowed  one  in  order  that  one 
may  be  enticed  o'n  to  the  larger  path  of  duty.  Even  duty  must 
not  be  read  in  impersonal  terms.  A  desire  to  further  the  wel- 
fare of  men  about  me,  if  it  wins  my  service,  does  so  only  be- 
cause it  is  that  in  which  I  find  most  satisfaction.  It  is  not 
impersonal  or  something  else  than  a  right.  It  is  my  right  and 
it  gives  me  most  satisfaction. 

CONCLUSION. 

I. 

The  existence  of  the  Absolute,  I  have  contended,  has  not 
been  proved  by  Royce.  Hence  the  individuation  traced  to  the 
thought  or  will  of  the  Absolute  hangs  in  the  air. 

It  is  contended  further  that  the  finite  individual  is  defined 
throughout  in  terms  of  'content'.  This  'content'  is  hypostatised 
as  the  individual.  The  union  of  'consciousness'  with  its  content 
is  taken  as  the  union  of  thought  with  the  actual  objects  of  the 
real  world.  The  terms  "self  and  'experience'  are  also  ab- 
stractions of  the  intellect.  The  only  change  seems  to  be  that 
the  latter  term  with  'will'  marks  a  change  of  the  'content'  from 
static  to  dynamic  terms,  from  thought  to  thinking.  Will,  des- 
pite its  relation,  as  stated,  to  desire,  is  but  a  clearly  defined 
purpose;  an  intention  to  act,  and  hence  is  intellectual  and  ab- 
stract. 'Interpretation'  nlso  is  idonl  construction. 


92  Royce   and  Indlviduation 

No  definition  or  description  of  the  individual  in  terms  of 
the  'content'  of  consciousness  can  give  us  reality  as  it  is.  Hence 
such  an  approach  to  the  nature,  of  individuality  casts  little  or 
no  light  upon  that  nature. 

II. 

The  theory  of  an  Absolute  and  a  defining  of  the  individual 
in  terms  of  intellectual  content  going  hand  in  hand,  I  have 
traced  to  this  untenable  view  the  defining  of  the  moral  ideal 
in  terms  which  portray  a  vicarious  or  self  alienating  principle. 
The  mere  unity  of  consciousness  and  of  ideal  constructions  is 
not  adequate  to  the  facts  of  real  life.  In  the  human  individual, 
life  is  seen  issuing  from  springs  of  desire  and  impulse  and 
these,  as  well  as  explicit  reflective  consciousness,  I  regard  as 
personal.  The  genius  of  community  is  harmonious  differen- 
tiation of  interest,  not  mere  unification 


lloyce   and  Individual  ion 
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14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

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